Liberi Fatali
by SwordSkill
Summary: CHAPTER 9: Mireille could hear her heart thundering as if it would explode. "They have us where they want us to be."
1. Liberi

** A/N:** I suppose my first and foremost reason for doing would be because I haven't seen any...well, real _action_ Noir fanfiction "out there." Action meaning the sounds of guns going off, the thin line between life and death, raw muscles running for one's life...that sort of thing that made me like Noir in the first place. So this would be my attempt of re-creating that atmosphere of danger. And lol, I know it sounds suspiciously like something that came from _The Matrix_. But aside from a few similarities (e.g. we are not who we think we are), I assure you it's very different and hardly what you'd expect. ^^ 

**Liberi Fatali**  


  


* * *

Excitate vow e somno, liberi mei. _Wake up from your dream, my children_.  
Cunae non sunt. _There is no cradle_.   
Excitate vow e somno, liberi fatali. _Wake up from your dreams, fated children_.  
Somnus non eat. _The dream is not going_.  
  
Surgite. _Arise_.  
Invenite hortum veritatis. _Discover the truth of the Garden_.  
Ardente veritate. _Burn with truth_.  
Urite mala mundi. _Scorch the world of evil_.  
Ardente veritate. _Burn with truth_.  
Incendite tenebras mundi. _Set fire to the world of darkness_.   
  
Valete, liberi, _Goodbye, children_,  
Diebus fatalibus. _From the days of destiny_.   
  
- "Liberi Fatali", Final Fantasy VIII

* * *

Chapter One:   
Liberi 

  


"_Votre café, mademoiselle._"

"_Merci._" The yellow-haired woman elegantly slipped her fingers around the delicate handle and brought the porcelain cup to her lips as the waiter left to serve another table. Legs crossed at the ankles, she watched quietly as Parisians walked across the cobblestone streets and bridges amid the darkening French sky. The sun was a golden coin slowly sinking below the rooftops of the city.

A promise was a promise. Putting it off would only be delaying the inevitable and fooling herself. She had reminded her of it countless times, and if she did not fulfill what she had said, only she would lose face. And Mireille Bouquet always kept her word, even if she would live to regret it.

She set the cup down on the saucer, her eyes accidentally glancing at the little pink handbag comfortably placed on her table. What was the Japanese word for "promise" that Kirika had taught her? Oh yes, _yakusoku_. And the instrument for that "_yakusoku_" she had given to her was in that innocent-looking bag holding a less than innocent gun with a full magazine of bullets.

_Les balles d'un pistolet_. Always to her it seemed that her life would be fated to hang by every bullet she possessed. It was a strange world to live in, one where people lived by destroying others. If that was progress, then what sort of monstrosity would regressing be?

Well, it doesn't matter anyway, she thought, unimpressed. She signaled for the waiter. It wasn't her part to think about the philosophies of being a gun for hire; thoughts like that seemed to belong more appropriately to Kirika, to the likes of Noir...

_Noir_, she thought darkly as she paid the bill.

"Anything the matter, miss?" asked the waiter, concerned.

"Oh..." The glare vanished from her face as she flashed a brilliant smile, waving her hand nonchalantly. "No, everything's fine. Thank you." She picked up her bag to leave. "Oh, and my compliments to the chef for the soufflé. It was excellent."

The waiter bowed.

Kirika was standing beside her beloved potted plant, looking out the apartment window with a cup of tea in her hands when Mireille arrived, a little soggy from the sudden drizzle that had besieged her on her walk home from the café. The raindrops were tinkling down the roof shingles, coming harder and harder by the minute.

"You're wet," said Kirika, turning around.

"Very astute of you, I'm sure," answered Mireille wryly as she made a beeline for her room. "Go on, say it."

"Say what?"

"That you told me so to bring the umbrella with me." Mireille's voice sounded muffled as she closed the door.

Kirika waited until Mireille had towelled herself dry and changed into fresh clothes. "You have an email. For Noir."

Mireille seated herself on the chair beside the pool table without a word, pulling the laptop nearer to her. After the entire Noir incident, she had decided to retain the codename for business' sake, and as a reminder. The Soldats had stopped bothering them and she had thought of relinquishing the title because its dark history, but she changed her mind, deciding instead to keep it for the convenience of her trade contacts and for the reminder that evil could never overcome evil, no matter how good its intentions are.

"Our client is a Wilhelm Schwarz," said Mireille as she read her mail. "Listen to this: 'Only when in Tokyo we meet can I the matter at hand disclose.'" She sounded a little startled. "Well, it's bad enough what the Germans do with their verbs, but I don't think we've ever had a client with this much gall before. What do you think?"

"What else does he say?" asked Kirika, setting her cup down on the table.

"Nothing much, only that whatever is bothering him is of a 'very secretive nature' and demands strict confidence. Just that and some details in making contact, such us him paying for our travel expenses when we meet him in Japan two days from now."

"Sounds pretty iffy."

"It's not so much the money that's bothering me, but I've learned that 'secretive' could mean the same thing as 'dangerous.'" The Corsican swiveled her chair to face her partner. "Well?"

Kirika hesitated. "Well, I won't mind seeing Japan again," she said tonelessly.

Mireille drummed her fingers, thinking. Yes, she probably needed something to occupy herself with before the dilemma of having to kill Kirika would drive her insane. But then why am I so adamant about wanting to keep her anyway? she thought, studying Kirika. She hardly expresses any emotion, rarely says what's on her mind, and the way how those huge, deep eyes of hers stare at me gives me the goosebumps. She's fundamentally an ice queen and not the most ideal companion. Then why? Why had I lowered the gun down in so many perfect opportunities to have this done with? _Pour quoi...?!_

For the exact same reason why I went back for her to take her away from Altena...

"Mireille?"

Mireille almost jumped from the sound and self-consciously resumed drumming her fingers in nonchalance. "We've been having a pretty dry spell lately," she finally said, "so it's worth a try, I guess. It's his life he's gambling, anyway." She stopped her fingers and lifted them up. " Got your passport handy?"

***

The tall man with the grizzled beard sat on one of the chairs of the arrivals gate, catching the attention of many. He was a big fellow with a grim visage in a gray suit, an attaché case steady on his lap with his two hands on top of it. He hardly moved. Only his brilliant eyes behind his glasses swept unceasing over the flow of the plane passengers filling into the lounge.

A young woman sat beside him unnoticedly, carrying a suitcase on one hand and a small bag on the other. She placed the suitcase on the floor near her feet and the bag on her lap, slipping a hand inside. She sat for a moment, her eyes well away from him, then she said in a low voice, "_Excitate vow e somno, liberi fatali..._"

"_Somnus non eat_," replied the other, smoothing the sides of his leather case calmly with his hands, not looking at her. A pause, then "Well met," he greeted in English with a heavy German accent, his eyes suddenly upon her, "Noir." 

"By arranging a proposal as unconventional as this, Herr Schwarz," said Mireille in the same language, not relaxing, "you understand that we cannot afford having anyone know who we are and that we do follow that rule accordingly. We do not respond to face-to-face contact very well."

"A bullet on my forehead would ensure that, would it not?" said Schwarz with a small grim smile.

Mireille's face tightened.

"Yes, it certainly would," nodded Schwarz, answering his own question. "Only too bad that airport security is so tight that they wouldn't allow anyone with a whiff of a gun in him or her to come in here, so you may take your hand off your bag with ease. But then, killing me doesn't have to happen here and now, does it? That we can later discuss." He shrugged and brought up an index finger. "But you said we. Where is the other?"

Mireille could feel her eyes narrowing, lips pursed. This man knew much, but she was not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she knew that, so she kept her hand inside.

"Kirika," said Mireille grudgingly, and Schwarz arched an eyebrow. The person seated on the chair that was linked behind his stood up, carrying her suitcase on her side. She turned and walked around the linked chairs to stand beside Mireille.

"_Wie geht es ihnen, Herr Schwarz?_" she said quietly in smooth German, without even a hint of an accent.

Schwarz looked surprised, then he smiled genially. "Ah, _gut_, _gut_, _danke_, Fraulein Yuumura. Of course, many languages does Kirika Yuumura know. I almost forgot, beg pardon."

Mireille tried not to let the worry show on her face. Who was this man and how did he know her?

"I mentioned that I will willingly pay for your travel expenses, I believe, Mademoiselle Mireille Bouquet?" continued Schwarz, taking out a leather wallet from his back pocket. "A flight to Japan for two is not easy on the purse, but still..." He took out a small wad of Euros. "At least I didn't have to worry about having to choose between French francs or Deutschmarks. Or would you rather have them in Japanese yen?"

Mireille looked at the cash money in his hands silently. At the rate of how much information Schwarz was dishing out about how much he knew them, she knew that he was a very dangerous man and she did not want to have anything to do with him. On the other hand, she wanted to know very badly who was his source of information, and if he would not talk, she would have to kill him. But he was right; security was tight in the airport and it was swarming with people, and both did not want a bloodshed in plain sight. She would have to tread carefully.

She stretched her hand and received the wad on her palm. Now we're committed, she thought grimly as she counted the money and placed it into her own purse. Now what are we going to do?

"Good, Mademoiselle Bouquet, that was the right decision," said Schwarz, looking relieved as he pocketed his wallet.

_Be on guard_, Mireille's eyes said warily to Kirika.

"Now if you would kindly follow me," said the man, standing up with his case.

"Where are we going?" asked Mireille almost immediately in a clipped voice, feeling Schwarz's Euros weighing heavily in her purse.

Schwarz looked sincerely apologetic, saying, "I'm sorry, Mademoiselle, but any description of the facility while we are outside of it is classified."

A secret facility didn't sound promising. Mireille wished she had the comforting presence of a gun in her hands as she reluctantly said, "Fine. Lead on."

They were led outside of the airport by the German to the car parking lot; Schwarz had a sleek, black Toyota of the latest model. The windows were thickly tinted. He courteously opened the side door of the back seats, asking, "Would you like me to place your suitcases behind in the trunk?"

"No, thank you, they're fine with us." Their guns were inserted in a special trick flap in the suitcases with special plates that would bounce off an ordinary luggage sensor. Mireille was taking no chances as she and Kirika slid uneasily into the leather upholstery of the car with their suitcases between their legs.

"I don't like this," voiced Kirika suddenly, who had not spoken a word after her greeting to Schwarz.

"Neither do I," Mireille whispered back as she watched Schwarz walked around for the driver's seat. "But we have to know how he knew our names and knew so much about us. It's unnatural."

Schwarz seated himself and turned the key, awakening the engine into a smooth roar. A turn here and they were well on their way out of the airport.

"I do apologize for calling the both of you in such short notice," he began, adjusting the rearview mirror to see them better. Mireille's jaw was taut and Kirika's face emotionless. "And I know you have many doubts. I'll set you clear at once; I'm not here to -how do you say it- pull anything funny...but by the Fatherland, I really do need your help."

"Then why all the secrecy?" demanded Mireille. "If you really needed our help, you wouldn't hide anything from us if you didn't think it would incriminate you, now would you?"

"I promise, all will be revealed once we've reached the facility," said Schwarz earnestly. "Otherwise you will not believe me."

"What?" Mireille's instincts were screaming danger in red lights. "What do you mean by that?"

Schwarz bit his lip, feeling he had said too much. After scratching his beard thoughtfully, he said, "Mademoiselle Bouquet and Yuumura-san, had any of you ever read or heard of the Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou?"

"Don't _you_ change the subject, you-" Mireille half-rose from her seat, but Kirika quickly held her hand and pulled her down, glancing at her meaningfully. Then the Japanese girl answered slowly much to Mireille's bewilderment , "No, Herr Schwarz, we haven't."

"He was Taoist and had a lot of interesting stories in his books," said Schwarz, eyes busy on the intersection. "Very interesting thoughts he had."

"I'm sure." Kirika's eyes were still warningly on Mireille's. Mireille stared back at her, perplexed.

"In one of his stories, he had once dreamt that he was a butterfly, happily fluttering along his way and being so delighted about it that he never thought that he was a man." Schwarz waited at the traffic light, tapping a finger on his steering wheel. "Then Zhuang Zhou woke up from his dream and found out that he was a man, and not a butterfly. Then he asked himself, was he Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or was he a butterfly dreaming it was Zhuang Zhou?"

Kirika blinked and looked genuinely enlightened. "That _is_ interesting."

"Yes, so much that the famous Chinese poet Li Bo made a poem out of the thought. If my memory serves me well, part of it went like this: 'Zhauang Zhou in dream became a butterfly,/ And the butterfly became Zhuang Zhou at waking. / Which was the real - the butterfly or the man?'" Schwarz stepped on the accelerator at the signal of the green light towards the city streets of Tokyo. "It's very plausible, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone took it seriously."

Mireille felt more and more bewildered. This seemed to be the Mad Tea Party all over again, only instead of tea and moonlight, this was about dreams and fluttering butterflies. She felt exactly what she felt that night of the full moon: that both her companions had both lost their minds and she was the only sane person left.

"Excuse me, but what has this got to do with _anything_?" she hissed at Kirika.

"A lot, I think." Kirika look mystified but certain.

Mireille surrendered to the hum of the engine and the cadence of the car, wishing she was somewhere else.

***

"Here we are."

Mireille clutched and unclutched her hands from gripping her suitcase. Kirika had oddly fallen asleep during the journey and had a countenance of utter calmness despite the seeming danger Mireille felt they were in. She looked outside the window. They had passed the central metropolitan areas of Tokyo minutes ago and were now slowing down to the slummier-looking alleyways. It was getting dark.

The car rolled over to a halt in front of a small, dingy Internet cafe with "DreamHub" badly scrawled in chalk over the plank above the door. The cafe was sandwiched between a ramen shop and a small herbal pharmacy. There was a broken parking meter beside them.

"_This_ is the facility?" Mireille could not help asking as Schwarz turned off the engine.

"Big things come in small packages sometimes, _ja_, Mademoiselle Bouquet?" said Schwarz mysteriously as he opened his door.

Mireille leaned over Kirika, nudging her and saying into her ear, "It's time."

Kirika slowly opened her eyes, black hair a little tousled, and sleepily stretched her arms before quickly reaching into the bottom of her suitcase. There was a small rip of velcro and the sound of a zipper being pulled before she returned with her Italian Beretta pistol snug in her right palm. Mireille already had her fully-loaded Walther, her hand rubbing its ergonomic hand grip tightly and reassuringly.

"Keep your eyes open," was what Mireille told her before Schwarz opened their door.

The man pushed open the glass door of the Internet cafe and a little bell tinkled on the ceiling. There were a few computer systems on two long desks parallel to each other on both sides of the room. Behind the desks was a small cash register on a table with two coffee-makers and a tray of empty mugs and glasses on the side. Someone was seated behind the table, reading a comic book.

The person groggily pulled down his graphic novel, revealing a young Japanese man with short, cropped hair and glinting glasses. "_DorimHabbu e youkoso_," he said absently before returning to his comic.

"It's me, Kinomoto," said Schwarz, chuckling. "And these two attractive ladies are with me."

There was a bit of a bluster as Kinomoto opened a drawer and threw his _manga_ into it. He shoved up his glasses, looking a little red and flustered, and bowed profusely. "I'm sorry, Mr. Schwarz, I wasn't expecting you to be back so soon," he said in perfect English, the trace of Japanese phonetics gone. He looked up and saw Mireille and Kirika with interest. "Are they the ones?"

"Yes," said Schwarz. "And they're armed to the teeth, I do believe."

"_Ah, sou desu ka_?" Kinomoto grinned not unkindly, as if he had already been expecting it. "Then they really must be the ones then."

Mireille gritted her teeth and moved the gun in her bag.

"Oh, where are my manners?" Schwarz gestured at Kinomoto. "Mademoiselle Bouquet and Yuumura-san, this is Akira Kinomoto, a Gatekeeper of the DreamHub."

"A what?" Mireille looked confused.

"You asked for the truth, Mademoiselle Bouquet, and now that we are in the DreamHub, the truth will be revealed, as promised. Come with me." Schwarz walked over Kinomoto's table, wasting no words, and opened a non-descript door behind. There was a small elevator inside.

"Let's go, Mireille," said Kirika, seeming unfazed as she made her way towards the elevator herself.

Mireille felt her legs walking robotically towards them. None of this was making sense. What was a Gatekeeper and a DreamHub? Why did Akira Kinomoto seem to know them as much as Schwarz did? And why was Kirika being so infuriatingly calm about it?

The last question is never really answered, she told herself a little dryly as she stepped into the lift with Kirika and Schwarz, last seeing Akira Kinomoto's bowing figure before the elevator doors closed.

There were no floor buttons on the elevator, only a small panel of circular, red buttons with nothing imprinted on them. Schwarz deftly pressed a series of the buttons in sequential order too fast for Mireille to remember. There was a small hum then the elevator began its descent underground.

"What if I told both of you," began Schwarz pensively, "that none of this is real?"

"Excuse me?"

Schwarz turned around. "Do you remember the butterfly in the dream? That we are completely fictitious entities in a virtual reality, that we are only imaginated characters in a dream, in someone else's sub-consciousness? That we could be 'deactivated' without even our knowing it?"

"I'd say you were crazy," said Mireille coolly, her heart pounding, wondering if she had made the huge mistake of accepting an oblivious madman for a client. She looked at Kirika. She was devoid of any expression and Mireille felt even more alone.

"People who didn't know better would say the same thing," Schwarz mused aloud. "But what of people who do...?"

The elevator stopped ominously at his words with a bell-like _ting_, but the doors did not open. Then a disembodied voice instructed from a small speaker overhead them, "Destination arrived. Voice recognition required."

Schwarz cleared his throat and much to Mireille's amazement, he sang slowly in a deep, bass voice, "_Row, row, row your boat,/ Gently down the stream;/ Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,/ Life is but a dream._

A pause, then, "Voice recognized as Dr. Wilhelm Schwarz. Welcome to the DreamHub. Proceed." The doors of the elevators swished open to a blinding light and the three stepped in. Mireille shielded her eyes.

They were standing on a small balcony overlooking a great, underground network facility of pure, pristine white the size of an airport hangar. Operators, wearing comlinks in their ears, were dressed in white and sat in egg-shaped chairs, their fingers flying over clear, transparent touchpanels that emitted tinny beeps and trills at their every touch, coordinating what seemed to be different maps of the world. Everything worked in efficiency and speed and in silence.

"Mademoiselle Bouquet and Yuumura-san," said Schwarz placidly, picking a long, white coat from the railing of the balcony and slipping it over his shoulders. "Welcome to the central hub of Dreamscape."

**liberi, end**


	2. Somnus

**A/N:** I thank my reviewers *bows*...it's torturous that FF.net writers grow so dependent on how many and what kind of reviews they have to get them to write another chapter and for once, finish the story. I'm trying to break out of that habit and try to toss it away like an old shoe, but it's not that simple. Maybe that's why I'm writing in a serie a little less known, such as Noir, so I could unlearn. Still, I thank my reviewers for their insight and the assurance they give that there still are people reading my work. It makes the transition easier. ^^

So before I waste any more time by blathering incoherently, I move the spotlight to Mireille and Kirika. They are waiting. *bows*

**Liberi Fatali**  


  


Chapter Two:   
Somnus 

  


The place was spotless and except for the painting of two swords crossed on a black background that hung on the wall, the room was as white as the entire facility. There was a large desk at the center of the room, barely seen because of its blending with the walls of the same color.

Mireille sat on one of the two white chairs that finally comprised Schwarz's office, her bag on her lap. Kirika was on the opposite chair, as motionless and as silent as a statue, but Mireille could see the readiness of her hand for the gun on her hip.

"Mr Schwarz." Mireille arms were crossed stubbornly across her chest. "Do you honestly think you can make me believe that I'm not real? That I'm just some holographic...pattern of particles, is that what you're saying?"

"Please, Mademoiselle Bouquet, allow me to explain to you everything first. You...all three of us...in fact, everyone in this world as you know it, is a subconscious image in a virtual world called Dreamscape." Schwarz sat behind his desk, his fingers steepled. "We are _not_ holograms...only non-humans are. We are customized identities in a network of human minds."

Mireille looked as if she did not even want to hear this, but the sight of the white, almost alien facility had given her a precaution to take as much information and process it as much as was possible. Something very strange was going to be revealed to the world and she wanted to be prepared, despite her strong assertion that anyone who thought they weren't real was a fruitcake. 

"First you must understand, although not necessarily accept, the premise that we are currently in an artificial reality, similar in principle to the cybernetic world of the Internet. This reality we are in is called Dreamscape. This Dreamscape was created by humans in their reality called the Real-World," said Schwarz slowly. "Do you understand?"

"I'll try," said Mireille not willingly.

"You have heard of the saying that in truth, we have only lived half the number of years in our age because we've spent the other half sleeping?"

"Yes, although," Mireille couldn't help adding, "it sounded rather smart when I first heard it, but it eventually became rather corny."

"Well, some people in the Real-World thought it was still pretty smart even after a long time." Schwarz adjusted his glasses. "Progress in science was made and soon they developed the technology to make the other half of their lives count while they were sleeping. Are you familiar with chat rooms in the Internet?"

"In this day and age, who isn't?"

"What about RPGs, role-playing games, whatever the medium, be it pen-and-paper, through the Internet, or video games?"

"Yes, I've heard of them, although I don't play." Mireille sounded a little sarcastic. "I don't exactly have the time."

"Well, imagine this technology invented by the scientists of Real-World as sort of like an online chatroom-based RPG for the subconscious minds of the people of the Real-World." He stopped. "I hope you do have an idea of Freud's theory of the two parts of the mind..."

"The conscious and the subconscious, yes, I do."

"Yes, and that dreams occur in the subconscious part of our minds. Well, due to breakthroughs in neuroscience, the Real-World has developed technology to manipulate a person's subconsciousness when he or she is asleep so that the person can join in a 'virtual reality' life of sorts connected with other people, as I've said, like the Internet. It would be like living another life when one is asleep. This can be achieved by wearing the Dreamscape visor that plugs a person into the Real-World DreamHub located in Japan, allowing one's subconsciousness to network with millions of others also connected to the Hub to play in the virtual environment called Dreamscape, where one plays as his or her specially-customized identity in a game of life, very much like an RPG. We call this The Great Game. The people are all connected in the Real-World DreamHub headquarters, where the Great Game and every aspect of it can all be monitored and the game background and circumstances can be set up by Operators."

"Are you telling me that my life is just a game...a form of...of..._entertainment_?!" Perspiration beaded on her forehead; Mireille did not take her humanity being mocked too kindly. She unknowingly made a fist that only Kirika noticed. "And what are those Operators doing, playing God?"

"In a certain point of view, yes, if you want to put it that way. But that is only for the external factors, such as the weather of Dreamscape or circumstances that people sometimes term as 'coincidences.' The characters themselves of the Great Game however, such as the three of us, are directly controlled by the decisions of our Real-World players, the true flesh-and-blood us, in a matter of speaking. After all, _they_ are the ones playing us in their subconsciousness, and the decisions we make that supposedly stem from our personalities and mentalities, are the ones they are making from their own personalities and mentalities. Therefore, we, the game avatars, are granted an autonomy, but this autonomy is bounded by the human parameters of our players." 

Mireille was reeling. It was not probable, true, but it was possible, and scientifically speaking, it made sense. Then that would mean she isn't Mireille Bouquet...that Mireille Bouquet was someone else she did not know, and she was subject to the whims of that other? That she did not make her choices, but it had to agree with what that other would have chosen also?

"Of course, the Real-World players can only play this when they are asleep," Schwarz was saying, "so it would mean that while they are asleep, we are awake, and when they are awake, we are asleep in Dreamscape. But then, since Real-World people do not sleep exactly half of the day but only about a third of the day, averagely, this would conflict with the day-to-day life their characters are supposed to have. So this was remedied by inserting a few added memories in our, the game characters' that is, memory banks so it could seem that we have lived, or stayed awake to be more precise, two-thirds of a day when we were actually asleep during two-thirds of that day."

"Added memories?" Mireille's eyes widened and her voice jumped half an octave higher. "_I_ have memories that didn't really happen? And what in the name of all that is sacred is a memory bank?"

"Whatever that transpired in Dreamscape are stored in memory banks in Dreamscape DreamHub, this facility where we currently are, that can be automatically accessed by the Real-Person players plugged into the Real-World DreamHub. You know of memory cards used for video game consoles? It operates in the same way. These memory banks are where we, the Dreamscape characters, base our personalities and mentalities from and furthermore, our decisions, from the past experiences of our game life we had that are currently stored in there. And yes, Operators of DreamHubs are given the liberty to feed you extra memories everyday so we could live and sleep in what seems to be an ordinary 'day.'"

"I can tell you that there's nothing ordinary about this, _mon Dieu_," snapped Mireille, her nerves shaken. Everything seemed to fit; she could find no loophole to disprove him. And who could say what was really being "fed" into her "brain" and what was not when memories and their sources had always been such a mystery?

"One thing, though," she said after a long pause. "You obviously know that I don't believe any of this. But that can't be, can it, when my own Real-World player, or whoever she is that's controlling my actions, knows that she's only playing a game? And if you say that my thoughts are the thoughts of my player, then am I not supposed to know myself that I'm only a game character?" She crossed her arms triumphantly.

But Schwarz only unsteepled his fingers and spread his hands over the table. "It's important to keep in mind that we are only in that player's Dream. And what happens to a dream when you wake up? You only remember the feeling and vague images that at most are fragmented. You rarely, if not at all, remember events in sequential order, even though they had been so real and vivid in the dream. In fact, you sometimes don't even know whether you had a dream or not in the first place and no one can say so either. And remember, everything that happens in Dreamscape are permanently stored _only_ in the Dreamscape memory banks and not in the player's head. The life played in Dreamscape is severed from his or her Real-Life and there are no ties connecting the two. As I've said earlier, it's like living a completely separate life. That's why the death of a game character brings no effect to the body of the player. A 'death' could be the result of the player getting tired of the character, or a 'Game Over' because the players made a few wrong decisions, and many other possibilities."

Her knees felt a little weak. This was getting into a nightmare, if it was possible for a nightmare to occur in a dream. So much for humanity.

"However, the Real and Dreamscape lives of DreamHub Operators are a completely different matter," Schwarz continued in the same breath. "That is why I am here and I know that we are only dreams. Operators' conscious and subconscious lives are linked together for purposes of maintaining the system in case anything happens, so technically, our Real-World players are devoted to working in the DreamHub system when they are both awake and asleep. So what happens to my body in Dreamscape happens to the one in Real-World and vice-versa. It's a risk Operators have to take." He finished, looking at them expectantly. "Would you like me to prove it to you?"

"What?" asked Mireille dazedly, her head spinning. Maybe she had never met Kirika at all. Maybe it had been just a "feed"...

"Would you like me to prove that I know your 'life' inside out?," said Schwarz, interrupting her thought. "I'm an Operator, and we have monitored your Dreamscape life and can access your memory banks if we have to convince you. I've actually reviewed some of your more pertinent memory files before I sent you that email in case you didn't think this entire business was credible."

"You've...accessed my memories?!" The Corsican could barely control herself at this new information.

"Yes. Ask me anything, if you want to prove to yourself that what I have said is true. But remember, I can only know what happened physically then, and not your thoughts."

Mireille was burning with indignation. Forget about age or place-of-birth or other of those kinds of bio data. If this man wanted to pit her memories with her, she'll give him a fight for it.

"How did my parents die?" was the first question she challenged.

"They were assassinated by Yuumura-san here when she was only of a young and tender age, manipulated by Altena actually for Le Grand Retour, because your parents did not want you to become one of the Noir," answered Schwarz immediately.

Mireille looked at Kirika and the girl stared back. This unsettled Mireille greatly so she composed herself before launching another. "You know Chloe, I presume, Herr Schwarz?"

"Of course."

"As much as she called herself the True Noir, she once gave me a title herself. What was it?"

"'Soldat's child', which was a perpetual mystery to you at that time, I would believe. Caused quite a stir to the Operators who were monitoring you when they watched the game. Whoever was playing Chloe certainly had style."

Mireille could not bring herself to believe it. It made her life seem so trivial, like a soap opera that could be watched by many. She was about to ask him what was the lethal vow that she had given to Kirika when they first met, but when she looked at Schwarz, she seemed to see something in his eye that said he knew everything about her. Besides, she was not comfortable about breaching that question in front of Kirika. She shivered inwardly from anger. So this was reality.

"You are very convincing, Mr. Schwarz," she finally said, keeping her voice controlled.

"I appreciate that." He veered his view to Kirika. "Would you like to cross-examine me too, for fairness?"

"There is no need. I do believe you," said Kirika calmly.

"You do?!" Mireille's own abruptness startled herself.

"Mr. Schwarz," said Kirika, looking very serene, "based from what you said, that would mean we would have our Real-World counterparts, wouldn't we, who could be very different from us?"

"But of course. That is a large possibility. After all, the characters one could play in Dreamscape are customizable from the start."

"Would you be able to tell us what we really are in the Real-World?"

"You would naturally want to know that," said Mr. Schwarz, smiling, "and I came prepared. In reality, you are Kirika Yuumura, an ordinary teenager of fourteen in Japan attending second year junior high school in Tokyo. Your parents are located in America, working overseas, and money is sent to you by a monthly basis for you to support yourself. On the other hand, Mireille Bouquet is a twenty-year-old Corsican-born Parisian, working as an assistant bookstore keeper of Librarie LeBlanc. You live alone in your flat in Paris. Your mother, Odette Bouquet, lives in Corsica while your father died of cancer when you were young. You are affianced to Jacques d'Orleans."

"I am what?!" Mireille paled.

"And the most significant difference is that Kirika Yuumura and Mireille Bouquet have never met each other, at least not face to face. Only in Dreamscape, where they play you."

"We...are not Noir?" asked Kirika, her voice suddenly full of hope. Something in her tone made Mireille feel a little anxious.

"No, there is no such thing as Noir in the Real-World," said Schwarz matter-of-factly. "Not even the Soldat organization that you fear so much is real."

"_Yokatta_," breathed Kirika, a soft smile suddenly appearing on her face like sunshine. The epitome of quiet happiness, she turned to look at Mireille. "Did you hear that, Mireille? None of that had ever been real."

"I...I..." Mireille was struggling to control her emotions that were threatening to overwhelm her like waves crashing on the rocks of a beach. She could not understand why Kirika was so happy of the fact that all they had gone through was nothing more than a set up, something that was acted out for the sake of entertainment. Her fingernails dug into her palms. Didn't she feel insulted, wronged, defiled? 

Did Kirika regret meeting her?

"It may not have been real," said Mireille hoarsely, furious at herself and Kirika, "but it felt real to me." She clutched the arms of her chair, head bowed.

There was an uneasy silence.

"Of course," said Schwarz worriedly, "you don't have to accept it if you don't want to, Mademoiselle..."

"You're right," Mireille lifted her hand, "I don't. But that doesn't matter. Besides, you called us for a business deal and we're going to keep it professional." A pause. "I'm sorry for my outburst; I was not ready."

"Mireille..."

"Thank you, I'm _fine_, Kirika," said Mireille curtly. "Mr. Schwarz, let's get this over with while we can. Who is your target?"

"A Mr. Steven Ramsey. He's an American millionaire." Schwarz adjusted his tie, looking concerned. "He used to be one of the stockholders of Dreamscape Role-playing, Inc. until he began to be a little more..._aggressive_ of how the system should be run. Apparently, he said, the DreamHub should be used not only for subconscious control but should be tested for conscious control as well. A 'scientific advancement,' he said. Well, you could very well imagine how our Board of Directors reacted to that blasphemy, and Mr. Ramsey reacted to _that_ by withdrawing his millions and selling off his Dreamscape shares. No big matter, of course, since there were a lot of other people interested in buying shares because of Dreamscape's success. A month later, we thought the issue had already simmered down. But then, during our checking rounds, we found that many spare pieces of delicate equipment that were most important to the Dreamscape subconscious network had noticeably disappeared. It wasn't the loss that bothered us but the point that we didn't know in whose hands they were in troubled us greatly. Eventually, after thorough investigation, we found the traitorous insider." Schwarz swore in a coloful string of German at the recollection. Mireille hardly batted an eye.

After calming himself, he continued, "He was one of our most trusted Operators and he sold us out to Ramsey. Yes, after some...persuasion, he admitted he was under Ramsey's employ and had smuggled the spare parts one by one during his breaks in exchange for a very substantial amount of money. The fool. He didn't know what Ramsey is really after, which had become so obvious to us by then. Apparently, Ramsey had not said very much to the insider, so after we got what we wanted, we eliminated him."

Schwarz took a deep breath. "We know we can't successfully press charges against Ramsey; he has a powerful circle of friends in many, many countries who would do anything for him for a bit of cash. And besides, if we could, what were we going to charge him with? Robbery? He could easily pay bail to get him out of something that slight. For potential mind control? What sort of charge would that be? We decided that a quiet and successful elimination would be the only way that would prevent him and his scientists from developing our technology into something monstrous. So we turn to you."

"Couldn't you find assassins in your own Real-World?" Mireille asked politely, trying to keep her voice from cracking.

"Mr. Ramsey is no sitting duck in the pond, Mademoiselle; he has his own spy network made up of ex-CIA's, the best security system the men from Silicon Valley had ever built, and the most ruthless jackals that had ever been whelped in the face of the planet as his friends," said Schwarz with venom. "Besides, we have to have someone who would guarantee us a high chance of success, because otherwise if we were found out, Ramsey would press a charge on Dreamscape so serious that we would go bankrupt in less than a day." Schwarz looked at them seriously. "You are the best we have of both worlds, and we have the technology of transferring both of you to the Real-World. And I promise you a bounty so huge for his head that you wouldn't even need to do a single killing as a living for the rest of your life."

"Why would that matter to us? We aren't even real, as I recall," Mireille pounced involuntarily.

"That is a very good point, Mademoiselle Bouquet, and I knew you would bring it up. How about this then?" Schwarz lowered his voice, as if he was about to divulge a great secret. "As I said earlier, we can transfer both of you with your Dreamscape memories and abilities to your Real-World bodies for as long as you need to do your job...that's otherwise prohibited and forbidden, but desperate situations call for desperate measures. And if you succeed, you can stay there for as long as you like. Even forever. How's that for a deal? To be real?"

Mireille felt sickened by the possible direct violation of her Real-World counterpart's human rights, and when she saw the interested sparkle in Kirika's eye, she felt even sicker.

She knew she had every right to refuse to such a blatant, underhanded deal, but there was a tiny part of her curious to see the Real-World, curious to see who she really was. The tiny part began to grow. Besides, they wouldn't necessarily have to accept Schwarz's rather generous offer on a sale for real life if they succeeded on the job. They would only be window-shopping. They would be 'just looking.' And besides, Kirika would never let her hear the end of this if she refused without even trying reality, a reality where they had not come from a bloody history of Noir.

After all, thought Mireille satisfactorily as she made up her mind, she wasn't really making the choice. If it was in the personality of her "player" to make such a choice if also faced with the same situation, then who was a game character to say no?

"We'll take the money _and_ the Real-World proposal," said Mireille imperiously. "But it will be up to us in the end to see what we would accept."

"Done!" exclaimed Schwarz, throwing up his hands for joy. "That is a small price to pay for the favor you will be doing us!"

"It's _not_ a favor; it's a business deal," answered Mireille coolly. "Nothing more."

"Of course, of course," agreed Schwarz, nodding vigorously. "You would like to get started now?"

"Let me have a word alone with my partner first to work out the details, Mr. Schwarz," Mireille replied, watching Kirika with one eye. "There is something we have to discuss."

"Ah, _ja, bitte, bitte_." Schwarz stood up, his head covering one of the hilts in the sword painting. "I will wait outside for you."

Mireille waited for the tall man to close the door then she pulled her hand out of her bag. Kirika relaxed her own trigger hand and placed it on her lap. They looked at each other in silence, their eyes goading the other to start.

Surprisingly, Kirika was the first to break it. "What is it you want to talk about, Mireille?"

Mireille hid nothing. "I'm not sure, but I know we have to talk about _something_ before jumping into this business. This isn't a game."

"This reality where we are now is," said Kirika, her voice determined. "We aren't Noir."

"And I know you're terribly pleased about that and all..." began Mireille snappishly.

"What's wrong with that?" blurted out Kirika unexpectedly. Then she lowered her voice. "I'm just glad to know that I wasn't born to be a murderer. I'm glad to know that the real me is just an ordinary teenager with parents and a life." 

Mireille was taken aback. She had never seen Kirika this assertive before, and for a moment, it frightened her. It seemed to her that Kirika, otherwise so cautious and thoughtful, was ready to throw their past, everything, into the wind and leap forward so blindly. The thought angered her and brought the blood to her face. It took her an effort to remain calm.

"Kirika," she said slowly, "don't get the idea that I'm barring you from leading a normal life. All I'm saying is that we musn't forget who we are and who we've become. The circumstances of our 'life' may be fabricated, but the feelings we've attached to them are real. You seem so...carefree about them." _Flippant_ was the word she wanted to use, but she held it back. 

Kirika knitted her eyebrows together. "Is...is that what's bothering you, Mireille? That you think I don't care about everything that happened between us?"

"Of course that's not what I think," said Mireille hastily, although it was exactly what she was thinking and it surprised her that Kirika could strike so quickly to the heart without even trying."Not in so many words anyway." It annoyed her. Mireille did not want to acknowledge what was annoying her, but _it_ did. She gave her voice an icier tone to cover it up and said mechanically, "I just think we should be more careful, that's all. It's not good to give a client the upper hand or...or....he'll cheat us of our payment," she finished lamely.

A slight shadow dropped on Kirika's face. "Oh," she said oddly. "The money, of course. Sorry, I thought you were talking about something else." She gave a wan smile. "I understand."

Then Mireille realized what it was that was nagging her about this entire, messy business. In the real world, they did not know each other, were not friends the way they were now that they would take a bullet for each other in a silent, mutual understanding. She had worked too hard for this friendship only to lose it just because it wasn't real and she felt she had been cheated. But she did not want to bring it up. It was confusing and embarrassing they way it already was and was being acknowledged.

"I'm glad you understand," she finally answered a little haltingly. "We'd better go. Mr. Schwarz is waiting for us."

***

The silicon nodes attached numerously on her temples made her nervous despite of herself. Mireille opened and closed her hands restlessly. She did not even have to turn her head to know that Kirika was also lying down beside her on the reclined, leather chair similar to hers, calm, quiet, and so enviably at peace in spite of the wires spread over their body connecting to the stark, alien-like machines managed by poker-faced Operators at the control boards.

"Those nodes have been especially made for this mission so that your entire Dreamscape entities, your being, be transposed to your Real-World personas," Schwarz said, coming over across the laboratory floor and looking over their heads. "My Operators and I will be at the helm."

"What are _those_?" asked Mireille antsily, seeing the red, steel bands in his hands.

Schwarz lifted the semi-circle bands with each a red visor melded on half its surface area. "These are your Dreamscape headgears that will allow you to be plugged into the Hub and set your subconsciousness to the Real-World. May I?"

Mireille felt the cold steel being attached on her forehead perfectly, the translucent visor hueing her eyesight red. It made the experience even more surreal.

"Maybe we should review the first objective of the mission," said Schwarz, finishing with Kirika's visor. "Both of you will find yourself in your bedrooms with similar visors which you will take off as soon as you wake. Mademoiselle Bouquet will be located in Paris and Yuumura-san in Tokyo. Yuumura-san, since I believe that she would not have enough money to fly to Europe, will find me waiting just outside her house to take her with me to Switzerland, where Ramsey is reportedly staying. Mademoiselle Bouquet, I will contact you by cellphone for the arrangement of our rendezvous by Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, which I believe you will have no trouble in catching a bus en route to the place. I hope that is clear to all parties involved?"

"What about our guns?" Mireille asked, already feeling the adrenaline pumping in her veins.

"Since we certainly cannot transfer objects from this world to the other, I will give you your arms when we meet by the Lake. According to your specifications, Mademoiselle Bouquet will have a Walther P99 automatic, fully-loaded, with its respective extra cartridges. Yuumura-san will have Beretta M1934 automatic, fully-loaded also, with her extra magazines of firepower as well." Schwarz furrowed a brow. "Are you sure you do not want a newer, more efficient sidearm, Yuumura-san, such as a good Walther or a Glock?"

"I like the feel of the Beretta," was Kirika's laconic reply.

"Then of course, the Beretta it will be," said Schwarz, although he still sounded a little puzzled. He shrugged and continued, "I cannot stress enough that you are now in your Real bodies; if you should encounter anything that will lead to your untimely death, it will truly be the end of your existences. We cannot pull you out of it." He signaled his Operators something, saying to the assassins, "And now both of you will be induced to a sleep so we can finally start the process of the trasnfer. Please count to ten and we will begin."

By the time Mireille reached ten, her eyelids felt heavy and she had just stifled a yawn. Her sight became hazy as one would see car headlights through an eyeful of tears as the visor began to glow and hum.

"I'll see you two on the flip side," was the last thing she heard from Schwarz as she drifted pleasantly to the dark.

**somnus, end**


	3. Cunae

**A/N**: Lol, don't worry, Black Aura, the action has finally come and is here to stay until the end. *musingly* This fic is turning to be quite masculine-oriented compared to the others; I guess I never imagined Kirika handling C4 explosives, but there's always a first time. Lol. 

**Liberi Fatali**  


  


Chapter Three:   
Cunae 

  


She sat on the brick ledge by the edge of the lake. From her vantage point, she could see the tall, fir trees that clustered around the famous Lake Lucerne of Switzerland, covering some old, medieval houses from view. Far away, she could see the tops of the magnificent, snow-clad mountains of the Swiss. The huge lake was peaceful, a ripple here and there but nothing more. Behind her was a row of small shops and trees dotting the sidewalk. It was an idyllic place, a few joggers and tourists milling around in quiet restfulness.

Mireille had a small bag of bird feed on her lap that she had bought from the little lady not far off from her. She tossed a few grains and crumbs on the pavement, bringing a cluster of pigeons suddenly settling near her feet, pecking. She breathed the cool, crisp air of the lake.

It had been strange waking up as Mireille Bouquet of the Real World.

_She woke up from the sound of a telephone ringing plaintively from the bedside table, jolting her from her sleep. Grumbling, she opened her eyes only to find everything in her sight in red. There was something on her forehead._

When she removed the steel visor from her head, her memories suddenly came to her like a storm, knocking her into disorientation. She tried to get her bearings but the telephone snatched away her concentration, jingling persistenly in an almost perverse manner. Sitting up bleary-eyed, she pulled the receiver into her ear, her head pounding like a bad hangover.

"Mademoiselle Bouquet, it's me, Schwarz," said the other line before she could even say a word. "I trust you made the passage safely, with your memories intact?"

There was a pause. "Schwarz? Oh, yes, I remember...the assignment," Mireille mumbled, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "I'm still a little confused, though...what...?"

"It's a memory lag; your memory banks are transferring its contents in full capacity and it can get a little dizzying, but it will clear up momentarily," reassured Schwarz warmly. "Are you feeling all right?"

"I'm a little nauseated," replied Mireille, her stomach turning at the heavy morning taste in her mouth.

"You'll be fine. If you can't stand it, a little aspirin might help."

A thought struck Mireille. "How's Kirika?"

"She's fine. It's nighttime here so I had to interrupt her in the middle of the sleep, but she's a trooper and now we're on our way to the airport."

"Can I talk to her?"

"We're in the car right now and she's asleep..."

"Oh, I see. Don't bother then, thank you."

A grey-breasted pigeon landed on Mireille's arm, eating from her hand. After she had inquired of Kirika, Schwarz had given her the details of the rendezvous, of where and what time they would meet by the Lake. Since it would obviously take them a longer time to arrive, she could have a day to herself before going on the bus to Switzerland, which was France's southern neighbor.

After changing, she had found some food by the kitchen and had cooked herself some breakfast. She had planned to draw a bath for her to recollect herself at leisure, but a ring of the doorbell had interrupted her while she was doing the dishes. Wiping her soapy hands, she had left the sink to open the door.

_A tall, handsome man with short, brown hair and blue eyes that matched hers stood by the doorway. He thrust a bouquet of flowers into her hands, said "_Bonjour, ma cherie_," and before Mireille could recover from her amazement, he had backed her to the wall with his arms and had given her a long, passionate kiss on the lips._

Mireille almost dropped the flowers. She pulled herself away in shock and her first instinct was to plow a hard fist into the intruder's stomach. But seeing the surprised look on the man's face, Mireille suddenly remembered Schwarz saying that "she" was affianced. This must be her "fiance," Jacques d'Orleans.

The pigeon stared at her as she laughed from the recollection.

_"What's the matter, Mireille?" asked Jacques, concerned._

"Oh...nothing...Jacques," she said embarrassedly, wishing desperately that he had not come at this time. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Jacques answered amiably, his eyes twinkling. "I'm ready to go."

"Oh, of course_ you have to go now," said Mireille, pleased that maybe some important business had to take "her" Jacques away from her hands during the meantime. He must have come here to take his leave. "Be careful!"_

Jacques stared at her quizzically and then burst into laughter. "Very funny, Mireille, always the prankster. You almost got me there, as if you forgot our date."

"Our...date...of course," echoed Mireille, deflated. So she was_ stuck with him for the day. Then a flash of genius: "But...I have work today in the bookstore."_

But that did not go far. "Monsieur LeBlanc gave you the day off, remember?" reminded Jacques, putting a hand on her forehead. "Are you sure you're all right? You're a little red."

She mustn't dump him, although she wanted to do it so much. He was the fiance of the other Mireille Bouquet, the one whose body she was borrowing. She wasn't even sure if she would stay as the Real Mireille forever, and if the Real one came back and found him gone, she would be devastated.

Mireille threw the last of the seeds to the hungry birds and she got up to put away the empty plastic bag into the garbage receptacle. So she had gone with Jacques to their date, which had surprisingly turned out to be a day in Corsica to visit her mother, Odette Bouquet.

Mireille returned to her seat, more subdued. The view of the high and craggy coastlines of the island of Corsica from her boat on the twinkling sea had initiated so much memory transfer from her memory banks, as it always did in Dreamscape. This was home, and she was going to see her mother.

Her mother lived in Ajaccio, the capital city of Corsica. Her house was a mansion, as the Bouquets came from a high, aristocratic lineage, and seeing Bouquet Manor so alive and so open with servants bustling for her visit had brought a lump in Mireille's throat. The last time she had seen it in Dreamscape had been almost sorrowful, the manor abandoned and the furniture in disarray, all of the Bouquet tradition slowly ruining to an end. And then there it was again in the Real-World, this time regal and untouched, as large and as imperious as she had remembered it when she was a child.

But perhaps what had affected her most was the sight of Odette Bouquet, alive and beautiful, smiling at her and pulling her into a embrace. Mireille had immediately felt her eyes welling with tears just before she had hastily blinked them away and bit her lip as she hugged her back tightly with all the worth of the years since her "death." Her mother was everything she remembered of her; kind, graceful, and gentle, with the same Corsican beauty that had been endowed on Mireille herself. Mireille had never realized that they looked so alike until that meeting.

It had been hard trying to keep the tears and the memories from overwhelming her as Mireille sat with her mother and Jacques, having lunch and discussing her "marriage" plans as if she had just met her mother earlier by a month ago. Whenever it was someone else's turn to speak, Mireille would tune out and focus all senses on her mother and would embarrassedly have to be woken up from time to time. But it had been so hard to believe that her mother was _alive_, sitting across the table with her warm eyes and talking to Mireille so affectionately as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Delivering Ramsey's head to Schwarz would be a small price to pay in exchange for the existence of Mother, thought Mireille dreamily now, the fluttering pigeons having left her. How could one say no? Maybe she would accept the reward for Real life after all. Perhaps Kirika was right all along..

"Mademoiselle Bouquet?" Schwarz's German voice startled Mireille.

"Oh...Wilhelm Schwarz..." Mireille said, quickly remembering where she was and suddenly seeing the Lake and the trees again.

"How did you find Monsieur Jacques?" asked Schwarz, grinning, dressed in an overcoat.

"He was very sweet but a little too surprising," answered Mireille dryly, turning around. Then something else caught her eye. "Kirika?"

Kirika was standing behind Schwarz, looking a little tired. But it was her, with the same penetrating look and the complete lack of expression. She did not look any different as she raised a hand in acknowledgement. "Mireille." Even the voice was exactly the same, with its odd, distant quality.

"Well, we're finally all here," said Schwarz, sounding pleased as he carried a backpack and two suitcases. He dropped the two suitcases on the ground and took out a cellphone from his pocket. "I had a small cottage rented in these parts not too far away; I'll have to check my contacts if it's secure for us. One moment, please."

As Schwarz punched the buttons on his phone, Kirika quietly made her way towards Mireille, who was just standing up and stretching her legs. The older woman raised her eyebrows at Kirika's questioning eyes. "Yes?"

"Did you see your mother?" the other asked, her glassy eyes glowing under a soft shine.

"Yes...as a matter of fact, I did," said Mireille. She couldn't help a smile spreading across her face.

"She was a very nice lady," Kirika reflected, her voice full of meaning.

"She _is_, and still is," corrected Mireille, knowing how much this meant to Kirika.

Kirika looked at Mireille wistfully. "She looked...looks a lot like you."

"She does." Mireille laughed and sat back on the ledge, seeing Schwarz still busy with his contacts. She patted the ledge for Kirika to sit with her. "What about your parents?"

Kirika obliged gratefully. "They're working in America, but I called them by long-distance just after Mr. Schwarz woke me up with the phone."

"And?"

Mireille thought she saw something moist in Kirika's eye. "You were very lucky to have met your parents, even for a few years," said the girl in reply, her eyes downcast. "This was the first time I ever heard their voices as far as I can remember." She looked up, making an effort not to make her voice sound choked. "They told me they loved me."

Mireille unconsciously draped an arm across her friend's shoulders, looking far off to the pristine lake. She had never seen Kirika so content before. Kirika snuggled warmly against her, like a little sister who wasn't sure what to do with her newfound joy. Mireille was beginning to understand why Kirika had wanted this job so badly.

Schwarz snapped his phone shut, looking satisfied. "The cottage is waiting and the crew have set the computer monitoring system for us already." He stopped, seeing them together, and smiled, "The world suddenly seems to be a better place, doesn't it?"

It's basically the same world, Mireille was thinking, only this time it wasn't under the hands of Operators who needed to keep the players entertained. She pulled her arm off Kirika's shoulder and said coolly instead, "We'd better start on the mission while it's early."

***

The man with the shaved head took a pack of cigarettes from his bullet-proof vest and a lighter from his pocket. He pulled a stick and struck a flame, watching the end of the cigarette catch fire. He puffed.

"You?" He offered his similarly-dressed companion his pack. The other shook his head, leaning on his M16 rifle listlessly.

"You're looking bored, same as all of us stuck with this hunk of fortified concrete. You need a smoke." The shaved guard waved irritably at the towering castle they guarded, the design dating to the Middle Ages but the walls re-cemented with heavy-weight concrete. It was Steven Ramsey's resting-home in Switzerland, with impressive sand-colored battlements and spires containing men in black with rifles in their arms, keeping watch over the forest perimeter that surrounded the building. The medieval facade of the castle had been retained, but the entire area inside had been furnished into the most modern coordination center of security systems that had ever been designed, crawling with Ramsey's bodyguards. It was an impregnable fortress.

"I don't even know what use we're supposed to have to Ramsey," said the cigarette man, playing with the safety lock of his own rifle.

"You say that everyday, Bodenmann," replied the other guard with a touch of annoyance. "What's the point?"

Bodenmann ignored him, using the barrel of his rifle to point upwards at the steeples of the castle. "You see those snipers up there? They can take out anything that budges. Best part is they got a roof over the head so they don't end up with blasted bird droppings on their noggins."

"And they get a better view of the sunset than we do," said his friend, his eyes straining to see the sun sink behind the mountains under the hazy, dyed clouds.

"Don't care about sunsets, but if it makes you happy, yeah, they have a better view," shrugged Bodenmann, pulling his cigarette from his mouth to exhale a cloud. The wireless radio fixed on his head and plugged into his ear squawked quietly.

"Bodenmann here," he answered after turning on the radio and tapping the tinny microphone hanging by his mouth. "Shoot."

"South gate, report status."

"Just peachy. Not a living creature in sight. See anything, Meier?"

"_Nein_."

"That's a no from my partner, Central."

"Our scanners are detecting two humans together heading your way, and Mr. Ramsey isn't expecting visitors."

"Distance?"

"Roughly fifteen meters from where you're standing," the other line replied. "Just nearly outside of the forest perimeter."

"Armed?"

"Make that a yes. Pistols."

"Roger that, Central, we're on it." Bodenmann armed his rifle and motioned at Meier with his index finger to stay where he was. Without making a sound with his heavy boots, Bodenmann swiftly made his way into the fir-lined greenery, gingerly avoiding twigs on the ground that may alarm his presence. Shafts of the sunset penetrated into the forest gloom and a solitary fowl twittered once in a while.

"Central, you still have those two on your scans?" Bodenmann whispered into the mouthpiece.

The operator sounded surprised. "Don't you see them? They're just behind you."

"What?" Bodenmann whirled around quickly, his rifle aimed at whatever movement he may perceive. There was nothing. His eyebrows knitted together into a frown. "I don't see anything."

"Three o'clock, South gate one." Central sounded urgent. "Just two meters from you."

Bodenmann turned to his right, barely missing the rustle of bushes. He looked frustrated and he gripped his gun even more firmly, narrowing his eyes. "I hear them. Be my eyes, Central."

"They're closing in on you. We've alerted the rooftops to cover your back, but there's just too many leaves blocking their sight to get a good lock." There was a buzz as the other security operators notified the snipers.

"Roger that, Central." Bodenmann swore as he tried to locate where the two intruders were in vain. Everytime the operator gave him a location, he would find nothing except some trampled leaves. "Still together, Central?"

"Seven o'clock. They're just-"

Bodenmann never heard the rest of the instruction from Central. All he heard was a sharp sound behind him just before someone grabbed his neck and broke it. Bodenmann fell to the earth with a frozen grimace, prostrate.

Kirika calmly slipped Bodenmann's wireless device from his head and tossed it to Mireille. Mireille, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, lifted it to her ear and shook her head, hearing nothing but static. She threw it back on Bodenmann's face just before a sniper's bullet ricocheted into a tree, almost hitting her if not for the distracting foliage. Three more followed and Mireille and Kirika jumped away harmlessly

"We got one of the south gate, but the rooftops are shooting," Mireille said to her own mouthpiece, backing behind a tree. "Jam their transmission and get our cover ready."

"On it, N1," crackled the other line with Schwarz's voice. A bullet streaked across Mireille by a hairsbreadth and she leaped away smoothly, jumping and planting her feet firmly into the thick trunk of a tree before shoving herself out of harm's away and rolling across the dirt as another shot rang out, driving the bullet into the tree, barely missing her. She could see with the corners of her eyes Kirika running towards the opposite direction with hardly a sound, gun gripped in her hand. The young assassin evaded the rain of bullets in an effortless dance, as if she knew where the next shot was coming from, until she reached the south gate, unscathed, but in the open range of gunfire. The red, alarm sirens scattered over the Ramsey fortress were blaring panic.

"Your cover's there, N1, and so is N2's," Schwarz came in, like a blessing to Mireille's ears. She knew Kirika was matchless when it came to avoiding shots, but no one could stand against an entire battalion of snipers firing together in the open. Mireille turned and hid behind a tree just in time to see dozens of Schwarz's men, dressed in fatigues, scaling up the thick branches of the trees quickly with sniper guns strapped on their backs, some already aiming at the south wall. Those were Kirika's sniper cover. Hers was behind her, awaiting her move towards the forest edge facing the east wall, as they had planned.

"And their radios are jammed," she heard Schwarz add satisfactorily. "We'll have our own snipers well on the tops of the trees before the rooftops even get wind of what's going on."

"Good," said Mireille shortly. Kirika's snipers were already positioned on the high branches with their lethal weapons targeted at the black figures running around the rooftops like ants without their queen. One, two, then three more shots rang out, and five figures disappeared from one battlement. A barrage of shots followed. 

When Mireille decided that Kirika was safe enough in the hands of her cover, she led her own snipers in a quarter-circle around the perimeter towards the east, brazenly darting in and out of the forest edge to make sure that the fortress sentinels saw her. Bullets rained on their path and sometimes took one down from her pack, but they speedily made their way to the forest facing the east wall, jumping over broken tree trunks and flinging away the bushy arms of green plants. Mireille especially was in superb form, dodging away from the shots with every trick her body knew. The fortress snipers never left them. 

They reached the east wall forest and as she stayed behind a tree, her men climbed nimbly up the treetops, perching themselves for a good aim of the east wall snipers. They began shooting with perfect ease. She could hear the guns going off and empty bullet cartridges bouncing off the tree branches and thudding into the forest ground.

Mireille caught her breath and held her mouthpiece. "I'm at the east wall. How are you, south gate?"

"One of the guards gave me the passcode for the gate when I held him," Kirika replied, her breath gasping as she sidestepped the ringing bullets aimed at her while trying to pound the sticky C4 explosive into the south door, "but looks like their security system just changed it when they gave out the alarm." Kirika gave a grunt as she stuck the detonator fuse into the plastic clay of C4. "I had to take down all of the south guards on the head; they were wearing bullet-proofs and wouldn't leave me alone."

A bullet Mireille neatly zwinged across the space between Mireille's ponytail and her head and flew into a tree. Her heart jumped at the nearness of the shot but she had not yet finished talking to Kirika. "Need any of my cover?"

"Thank you, but my own cover is fine and you're also doing fine as the distraction." Kirika sounded matter-of-fact.

Mireille's instinct urged her and she leaped lightly up the tree, grabbing the branch with both hands and swinging herself up before another bullet burned into where she had been a second ago. She let herself go before anyone got a lock on her and rolled on the ground to sit back up against another tree.

"Fire in the hole," Kirika's voice announced on the radio. Mireille heard Kirika's footfalls as the girl took cover into the forest and braced herself.

There was an explosion and debris flew everywhere amid the acrid smoke. The south wall snipers had stopped momentarily in surprise. Metal careened in all directions from the impact of the bomb, making a huge, gaping hole on where the south door used to be. Concrete rained on the entrance, mixing with the already blinding smoke of the blast.

"N2?"

There was no answer except a reply of static.

Mireille knew that something that slight wouldn't harm Kirika, especially from where the girl was hiding, but one could never be sure. "Kirika?"

There was a pause then Kirika's impassive voice was back online. "I'm fine, N1." She was hurrying back to the south gate. "I'm going in."

**cunae, end**


	4. Mala

**A/N**: Story like this could open a lot of possibilities, lol, but I can't answer the questions yet that were asked in the reviews. It would spoil a trifle too much. I'm glad, however, that my fic made the readers think beyond the parameters of what was written. ^^ You don't always get responses like that. 

**Liberi Fatali**  


  


Chapter Four:   
Mala 

  


Mireille had suggested infiltrating the fortress by means of stealth and deception, but Schwarz had shaken his head, saying that he had already thought of that but had found it unfeasible. The Ramsey chateau was shut as tight as an oyster and their radars prevented anyone from getting too close to it, making it impossible even to take a glimpse of the gate passcodes, of which there were four, one for each side. Schwarz, however, had managed to acquire old floor plans of the castle before it had been sold to Ramsey. Although it would not help them as much as the blueprints of Ramsey's re-furnished fortress, Schwarz was sure that Ramsey could not have torn down the old castle's inner walls and rooms. It still _was_ a resting-house. He merely might had installed his security systems and placed guards, but that was all. Ramsey was well-known for his love of ancient humanities, and that played to their advantage. They would just have to figure out the most logical places that Ramsey would occupy.

Schwarz suggested that an open and frontal assault would have to suffice, despite its huge odds against success. A force of entry failed most of the time, but it was their only alternative. Besides, it was not entirely unpractical; Dreamscape Inc., upon appointing to Schwarz the responsibility of getting rid of Ramsey, had given him and his company a large budget to achieve the assignment. From the money, he had hired well-trained snipers, strongboxes of arms, poison, and explosives, a small home-base crew who had turned the Ramsey floor plans into an interactive, three-dimensional computer environment that could be navigated, hidden cameras attached on the assassin's clothes, and other odds and ends, such as the plane tickets and "information money."

He had already formulated his plan long before they arrived on Switzerland; the two assassins were actually the last part of the preparation before the siege itself. As Schwarz stayed behind with the crew to monitor their progress, they would need two people for one to act as a distraction as the other blasts the south gate with explosives. The south gate was the nearest entrance to what they theorized as Ramsey's bunker; they assumed that once the security systems were in full alarm, Ramsey's men would lead him to the shelter in case of assassination. 

Once an entrance was opened, one assassin would be sent to disable all the security systems to weaken the bunker and in preparation for their escape while the other be sent to deal with Ramsey. Ramsey's security would have to divide their forces into three: one to give chase to the enemy snipers to keep them from entering the fortress, another to eliminate the one in charge of wrecking the security systems, and yet another one to provide Ramsey with the best human-shield defense while on their way to the bunker. And Schwarz knew that the less united an army force was, the easier it would be to destroy it.

Mireille was still facing the east wall, currently tapping her mouthpiece. "Home, this is N1. Did N2 manage to destroy the surveillance cameras and sensors directed on the south gate?"

"That's the first thing she did when she arrived in the open," replied Schwarz, sounding awed. "She shot them down without wasting a bullet. And with such speed! _Mein Gott_, she has the best aim I've ever seen. She's not human at all."

"That's Kirika all right," said Mireille unconsciously, flinching as a bullet scraped into the bark of a tree, flinging splinters towards Mireille's face. Then she launched herself into a full run, leaving her sniper cover behind for the next step. As she cut through the foliage towards the south wall to join Kirika, she could already see in her mind's eye how her partner would break past the armed squad that would have been sent as reinforcements of the south gate. 

Mireille flipped into the air and landed down perfectly, jumping over a tangle of twisted roots and shirking bullets on her tail. It would be an old tactic that Kirika would be using, one that Mireille herself was familiar with. People usually made use of only four sides of a cube when monitoring their surroundings; they always kept their senses trained on their front, back, right, and left. They took for granted the other remaining sides of the cube: the top and the bottom. Mireille and Kirika frequently took advantage of this overlooking during assignments.

Kirika would clamber up the small extended roof that had been undamaged by the explosion and would lie in wait for the dust to clear and for the reinforcements to show themselves just behind the wrecked gate, the young assassin unnoticed because of the destroyed surveillance cameras. Once the reinforcements let down their guard because they could not detect her, she would instantly let the upper half of her body down, with only her legs to support her on the small roof. With her uncanny aim, she could shoot each of them on the head perfectly without breaking a sweat, staring at their pale faces upside-down.

Mireille panted, breaking out of the forest and into the open south wall, with Kirika's cover behind her. She had tried that tactic many times and could do it herself, but not with Kirika's perfection in targeting. And she knew that she would always be second to Kirika in the assassination business, and Kirika second to none.

Mireille danced away from the bullets of the south snipers, heading towards the blown gate. There was a litter of inert bodies surrounding it and leading into the inner chambers of the fortress, empty magazines lying on the floor, which Mireille recognized to be Kirika's. No one alive was guarding the south gate. She could hear Kirika's Beretta still firing deeper into the castle; she must be on her way to the bunker already. Mireille, however, had her own part to play.

"Schwarz, I'm in," she said. The radio crackled noisily. "I'm going for the security systems."

"N1, you're breaking up," she heard Schwarz reply. Then came a few buzzes as Schwarz was nearly cut off, but she heard the phrases "jamming our transmission" and "on your own." Then there was an impertinent break and then she could hear nothing but static.

Mireille turned the comlink off. She would have to hunt for the main center of the coordinated security systems on her own, although she did remember Schwarz telling her that the security center was most likely located in the heart of the castle, the second-floor hall, that was large enough to contain it. She stepped into the castle.

Although Ramsey truly did not tear down any of the original curtain walls, he had added roofs and additional walls to integrate the different towers and stronghold keeps into one, united building. It made the European castle look smaller to Mireille as she surveyed her possible routes. She was currently standing on the outer bailey, the first courtyard between the outer and inner walls. There had been a roof added. She would have to find a way to get through the inner walls, then around the inner bailey to finally reach the shell keep where the main halls of the castle were, and where she could finally get down to business. Kirika was nowhere to be seen, and the gunshots were echoing less and less audibly.

Mireille chanced upon a broken shard of glass and saw a three guns aimed at her, and she sprang into action, pulling her own pistol. Her would-be assailants fired each a shot before they fell down, the skulls smashed by the bullets that entered their heads. Giving Mireille no chance to rest, more bullet-proofed men came streaming from all directions, apparently having lain wait for her all the time to catch her alive.

Mireille bit her lip as she ran around the spacious bailey in a wandering direction, firing and reloading, furious that she had not studied in more detail the floor plans that had been shown to her. And she was still in the outer bailey, with inner walls, an inner bailey, and spiral staircases to deal with later.

Two men jumped on her and she hit one squarely on the groin with her boot before he landed, forcing him to drop his gun from pain before hitting the ground and squirming in agony. A well-aimed kicked on his head ended his misery as Mireille stepped back to shoot his companion.

_Kirika must be waiting for me now, wondering why the bunker's still holding,_ thought Mireille in exasperation as she leaped in an arc and brought down three bodies with her. _And here I am, stuck outside, because I didn't read directions properly._

Kirika.

Mireille's eyes suddenly flashed at the thought as her trigger finger pumped lead. Of course. Kirika had gotten farther into the castle earlier, killing all that came close to her, _leaving a trail_.

The piles of dead bodies.

Mireille looked at the corpses at her feet as she ran as hard as her legs could carry her. They all led to a certain direction and all she had to do was follow them. She remembered that the bunker was located down the basement, what used to be the dungeons, led by a staircase downwards from the ground-floor keep that was enclosed by the inner bailey. Kirika should have made all the way from the outer bailey to the ground-floor keep and into the basement, leaving her trademark, and from the ground-floor keep, Mireille could just look for the staircase leading to the second floor where the security hall was and do what had to be done.

She evaded a fist aiming for her jugular and grabbed the arm that had been reaching for her, pulling the man down and shooting him at the back of his head. She panted, her eyes following the trail and her other senses alerting her of incoming bullets or attacks that she skillfully warded off or confronted with the muzzle of her gun. But as much as she neutralized her assailants, there seemed more pouring out from every hole from the wall, the sight of bullet-proof vests almost suffocating her. Apparently, there were more security guards in the building than what Schwarz had calculated. There seemed to be an endless supply of them.

Her breath almost gave out before she saw Kirika's trail lead into a smashed door, the lock blasted by a bullet and the door kicked down. She gave a strangled but triumphant cry as she ducked in the embrasure and into the inner bailey.

The inner bailey was a courtyard even more vast and wider than the outer one, but even without the help of Kirika's litter, she could make out the door into the keep and the halls just a few meters away from her. Summoning whatever that was left of her strength, Mireille tore past her attackers, the sight of the door growing nearer and nearer before her eyes. A red-faced guard appeared in front of her, pulling the trigger, but she grabbed his shoulder almost unconsciously before catapulting herself into the air, firing rounds, and alighting on her feet as smoothly as a cat would. She _had_ to get to the main security hub in time.

Without warning, a bullet suddenly grazed her upper left arm, tearing her shirt and leaving a gash on her skin. She winced as the blood began to seep out and drip on the floor.

She crashed into the door leading to the keep with a puff, her shirt steeped in perspiration and her legs throbbing. She longed to slow down into a jog, her heart pumping as if her entire body would burst and the rims of her eyesight turning red from the exertion, but there was no time. Her hand was already trembling from exhaustion and her throat screaming for breath, but the glimpse of the spiral stairway built upon the spiral vault that went round the central newel gave her a fresh pump of adrenaline.

Five men blocked the entrance to the staircase and she broke into a run, planning how to take all five of them at once, but before she reached them, she saw with her peripheral vision Kirika coming up from another stairway that came from the basement. She was harrassed by attackers of her own, the nearest one just a mere arm's distance away from her, with a rain of bullets solidly behind her, pinging and poinging into the castle wall.

"Mireille!" she shouted and Mireille recovered from her surprise. This was certainly not part of the plan.

"What are you doing here?!" the Corsican roared, forcing herself to stop before she crashed into the five men of the stairway, their guns aimed on different parts of her body. Kirika's sudden appearance had made her lose her momentum and there was no way she could get past them now. 

Mireille looked around, her chest heaving. She had stopped running. Kirika had sped towards her and was now standing back-to-back against her, their guns pointed at opposite directions. They were in the middle of a large crowd formed by Ramsey's men, made of Mireille and Kirika's pursuers combined, all dressed in vests and automatics in their hands. Kirika was unhurt, but they were both trapped.

"You're hurt?" asked Kirika, with something of a hint of concern in her voice, having seen the blood on Mireille's arm as they faced the men together.

"It's nothing. What are you doing here?" Mireille repeated, if not a little heatedly.

"Ramsey's not there," explained Kirika, her breath ragged but her eyes staring steely at their opponents. "No one's in the bunker."

"Are you _sure_ it was the bunker?" demanded Mireille, half-wondering why the men dared not shoot at them, though their weapons were clearly trained at their vital parts.

"Yes," replied Kirika, her voice certain. "I'm sure."

"It _was_ the bunker," one of the black-garbed man said, leering and showing his yellow teeth. "I can tell you that."

"Well, we're in a pretty fix now." Mireille switched her gun from the right to her left hand, her eyes not leaving the layers and layers of men who blocked their way from any means of escape. They were two against a full regiment. "Looks like Ramsey's entire security force is here."

"It explains it," agreed Kirika.

"What does?"

"A third of them should be out chasing our own snipers from the trees," Kirika calmly elaborated, her shooting arm straight and her left hand firmly under the butt of her pistol. "But I don't hear any shooting."

Mireille suddenly realized how quiet it had become in the castle. It was a ghastly silence, a silence of comprehension that their plan had unexpectedly turned awry and they had been outsmarted. The entire regiment _was_ here.

"Give you a little hint," said the leering, yellow-teethed man despite some frowns from his colleagues to shut up, "we just set the forest perimeter on fire."

"You what?!" Mireille almost dropped her gun.

"Oh, you can't see it or sniff it from here," said the same man, savoring their victory after a long and arduous chase, "but we flamed it all right." He shrugged apathetically. "Certainly a lot of easier than having to take 'em one at a time. Sure, it's gonna ruin the landscape, but what the heck, you know the sandy pavilion that separates the castle and the forest? There's actually a pretty wide, hidden moat underneath, and we just had to make the pavilion collapse, so we're pretty safe in here from the flames." His eyes crinkled maliciously. "Flames that no one's putting out. It's an inferno out there. No one can get here, except if want to fly by helicopter and bomb us."

"The authorities will see it," said Kirika icily, the cold in her voice enough to douse a thousand forest fires.

"The authorities?" The man laughed. "You obviously have no idea about Ramsey's sphere of influence in these parts. We'll just chuck it out as a forest fire that we unfortunately didn't detect." He laughed again, with even more enjoyment. "If you want to look for Ramsey, he's in his office, third-floor of this building. Too bad we'll be taking you there anyway, in cuffs."

"That's enough, Holden," someone else barked immediately. "We have our orders."

"Mireille, you go for the target," Mireille heard Kirika suddenly say from her back. "I'll cover your back from here."

"Leave you alone _here_? That's crazy."

Kirika's eyes slitted, almost Noir-like. "I'll open you an entrance on three."

Mireille almost could not bring her mind to register what sort of obvious suicide Kirika was suggesting. "What-"

"One..."

"There is _no_-"

"Two..."

"_Mon Dieu_!"

"Three."

In mutual understanding, the duo whirled around towards their left, their backs still against each other, with Kirika letting loose a volley of rapid and accurate fire, hitting all the first layer of men with supernatural precision. Mireille dashed ahead towards the stairway, making use of the panic that erupted, shooting all against her path. When the men regained their wits, Mireille was already pounding up the steel stairs and Kirika hurtling from floor, ceiling, to wall, deadly Beretta in one hand and cartridges on the other from the belt bag she wore.

Mireille had almost reached the landing when she heard a group of men surging behind her, guns ringing. The stairway was cramped and the men came nearer and nearer. Regardless of her best efforts, Mireille slowed down, almost overwhelmed by her fatigue, that she could only turn around and pray that her shots would be true, despite her trembling and sweaty palms. 

There were four in front of her, but before she could take down even one of them, a shot rang out and Mireille felt something hot sear into her right thigh and dig deep into the muscle. Biting her lip that it almost bled to keep her mind off from her wound, she fiercely drove her bullets into their heads, making them plummet lifelessly into the others behind them before she turned around and resumed her course.

When she reached the final landing on the third floor, Mireille could not help collapsing on the last step wearily, catching her breath in large gulps. The gunshots two floors below her had not stopped, which meant Kirika was still miraculously alive. Mireille closed her eyes, giving a small prayer of thanks. Then she rolled on her back, her eyes twitching involuntarily. She had never been this harried before and she was spent from dodging bullets and shooting back; she would hardly be able to take Ramsey in this condition, with two injuries, one serious, and a complete drainage of energy.

Slowly, she pulled herself up painfully into a sitting position, half-expecting a squad of black gunmen to fall upon her. But oddly none came. She checked her bullet wounds, ripping a sward of her jacket to bandage her bloody arm and taking off the whole jacket to tie around her right leg, trying to stop the gaping wound which was already messy with blood and pus.

With effort, she stood up, her eyes scanning the place. Her surroundings were made of dusty red brick and fluorescent lights were fixed on the ceiling, lighting a way towards the cavernous hallway that waited for her. At the end was a medium-sized wooden door, ornately carved. There was no other way nor staircase.

The door beckoned at her and she moved towards it, knowing her prey was inside. She limped, feeling pain shoot across her leg everytime she put weight on her right foot. Her steps were slow and deliberate, echoing, and her gun was steady in her hand. Her blood was pulsing all over her and she could feel it coming from every pore of her skin. The thundering of her heart against her rib cage was the only thing she could hear.

She reached out and twisted the doorknob, opening the door.

A man was standing behind a desk, looking out the window, his back facing Mireille. He was dressed in a black suit and his edges of his hair was graying. He was tall and well-built, and he was holding a wine glass half-filled with red wine.

Mireille was a little surprised as she silently watched her step to get the perfect aim. She had been expecting a jowly, fat millionaire with an odious cigar and a wall of guards surrounding him, but there was no one in the room except for the man and herself.

"I have been expecting you," said the man in a refined manner, fingering the stem of his glass, but otherwise not moving. "But I must say I'm still pretty surprised that you made it here in one piece."

Mireille frowned. He didn't sound American to her. Nevertheless, she pulled the trigger, the bullet speeding like a rocket for the back of the man's head, but the man merely bent his neck and the missile flew harmlessly past him and smashed into the window, shards of glass bursting into the air. Mireille suddenly got a whiff of the burning forest mingling with the night air.

"I suggest you not to waste any more bullets," said the other, turning around. He wore a tie and his face was well-featured and his brown hair neatly combed towards the back. "I'm not the one you're looking for."

Mireille's eyes narrowed warily.

The man jerked a thumb towards the wall on Mireille's right. "He's right there."

The fake wall slowly rose up to the ceiling by some mechanism, revealing a large pane of glass separating the assassin and the strange man from a dark room. There didn't seem to be anything inside at first, but Mireille suddenly saw a cigar being struck and the flame illuminated a double-chin.

"Oh, Mr. Ramsey's there, all right," the man said, setting down his glass of wine on the table. "But you'll have to get through me first."

Mireille paid no attention to him as she pointed her gun at the glass and fired bullet after bullet. The bullets ran into the glass but merely wedged into it, creating small separate cracks over the pane. The glass held.

"As I have said, you _will_ have to get through me first." The man unbuttoned his suit and placed it over the desk beside the wine glass. He loosened his tie comfortably as he walked around the table to face her.

"Allow me, then," returned Mireille coldly, aiming the gun at his head and firing. But there was only a clicking sound as gun could find no bullet to propel. It was empty. Mireille quickly ran her left hand into her belt bag, but there were no magazines left.

"Certainly you didn't think that I'd have a go with an unarmed lady, did you?" There was a stand containing two fencing rapiers beside the man and he picked one up and tossed it to Mireille. "I'm assuming that you would know something about this, else this would be a very short duel indeed."

"Indeed." Mireille caught the sword deftly by the hilt and swung it below her hip twice, readying herself. She had been born into the aristocratic family of the Corsican Bouquets, and fencing was nothing new to her. She pulled the blade just inches from her face and said, "_En garde_," moving into stance of a broad ward.

The man stood facing her, his sword held down in a low ward, not moving, and she suddenly realized the great disadvantage she was in. He was in no hurry, but she was. She wanted to get this done with before her throbbing exhaustion and her wounds would force her to collapse on her feet. She had to fight while she still had the strength. She had no choice; she would have to make the first move.

Driven only by this thought, she instantly moved her right foot and swung her sword into an overcut, but the man did not even move his sword to parry the blow. Instead, his hand shot up like lightning and caught the end of the blade between his index and middle finger.

"Really, you do me a grave injustice, my dear," he said, unperturbed as he swung the sword point away and released it. "Do give me more credit for my fencing abilities; I assure you, you won't be disappointed."

Mireille closed her eyes and focused, breathing deeply, sorting her thoughts one at a time. One, the wound on her leg had opened freshly when she stepped forward to strike. She could feel blood running from the wound in rivulets down to her feet and she could already imagine how much of a red pool was already drowning her right foot. Two, this man was no ordinary opponent; his reflexes were sharp and she could see from the way he held his sword by an economy of movement that fencing was already second nature to him. Furthermore, by fighting in _his_ terms, by fencing, Mireille had made the mistake of giving him control over the situation. Three, came the pressing urgency of time that had been bothering her since she entered the room. Four, her strike must be quick and to the heart, with minimum sword swings to conserve energy and a final thrust.

Mireille opened her eyes and stanced herself again and the man brightened and readied himself as well. Almost imperceptibly, Mireille lunged a fake undercut from the ground up. The man brought his sword down to parry the blow.

She smiled. _I got him_.

But before she could whisk her sword away to aim the lethal thrust, her opponent suddenly jumped up and flipped in the air. He had read the fake all along and he had brought his rapier down not to parry it but to give him momentum as leaped over Mireille and landed behind her, sword poised.

Mireille spun around with her sword on the defensive, but it was too late. As she turned around in reaction, her opponent drew a wide cut horizontally from the left to the right.

Mireille felt the point of cold steel breezing on her abdomen before she felt the burning pain of the sweeping blow bite her. She dropped her sword and her legs gave way and she sank down on her knees involuntarily, holding her abdomen, her face twitching as she suddenly broke into abnormal sweat. The lower part of her shirt had been ripped off and there was a wide laceration on the flesh behind it, driven by the solid arc of the man's sword. Her arm could not stop the hemorrhage, the blood spilling over it. She was bleeding very badly and she felt dizzy, feeling all three wounds at once. She gritted her teeth.

"That was a good move you had there," she heard the other say as he tossed his sword across the room, clearly the victor, "but not good enough."

Mireille stared at him despite the dark that was threatening to possess her, livid with rage. She could not move and she was trembling all over as her body tried to cope with the extreme loss of blood. He, on the other hand, was calmly punching some numbers on a cellphone he had pulled from his pocket.

"Bring the other one here," he said with a tone of authority beforing pocketing the phone back. "Well, my dear," he continued, facing Mireille as he picked up his coat and put an arm into the sleeve, "I'm supposed to be here to interrogate you. Standard procedure, of course."

Mireille watched him in cold anger as he buttoned his coat and picked up his wine glass. "You'll get no such satisfaction from me," she spat between breaths, crumpling even lower on the ground from her weariness. Her head was swimming and she felt cold. "And what did you mean by the other one?" 

"Surely you haven't forgotten your friend," obliged the man, sipping his glass and frowning at the taste.

"Kirika!" gasped Mireille, more to herself in apprehension.

"Oh, so that's her name, is it?" The man approvingly sat on the desk, looking at the dark room where his employer was seated. Then he nodded at something behind her after she heard the wooden door creak open. "That would be your friend, correct?"

Mireille did not want to turn around. For one, she did not have strength to do so, and more importantly, she knew she would not like what she would see. She should have known that Kirika would not be able to hold out for so long. But she willed herself to move, praying for a miracle.

The girl was hanging on a man's shoulder, battered and bruised, blood dripping from a mottled gash on her forehead. Her hair was tangled and askew, covering her face from view. Her limp arms held red, angry welts and her jacket was shredded. Her body was inert.

_No_.

Mireille struggled helplessly, feeling arms roughly lifting her up from the ground, her sight darknening even more.

_It was impossible. There cannot be such a thing_.

The dark called louder, and sapped of strength, Mireille finally succumbed bitterly to it. Her sight disappeared and she felt enveloped by the silent blackness.

Black...Noir.

_Kirika..._

**mala, end**


	5. Excitate

** A/N:** I'm not even sure what to say here in fear of giving too much away, only that I can't wait to write the next chapter. I got myself rather excited as well. XD Anyway, we're getting quite near the meat of the story as some of the truth is revealed in this chapter. I have to say that some of the reviewers had struck quite near in guessing the truth about the story...they weren't quite accurate, thank goodness, but they were very near. ^^ Anyway, here's the fifth chapter, after a gruelling semester of school! Enjoy! 

**Liberi Fatali**  
  
Chapter Five:   
Excitate 

  


_Lights...so many bright lights...where am I?_

Who am I?

She struggled, reaching for that thought that was fast eluding her, grasping with her outstretched arms for the memory that might slip away from her any second...

_I am Mireille Bouquet. I was born in Corsica._

That was not all she was; there was more. Her identity was so near, yet so far. She swam in the dizzying whiteness of the blinding glare, forcing herself to recall for remembrance's own sake.

_I am an assistant to a bookstore-keeper..._

NO!!!

The protest was so vehement that Mireille started from her own internal thought, almost losing the elusive ghost of her memory from her palms. Then she felt herself close everything in her being, shutting every sense from the external, abandoning reason, letting herself wallow in the brightness. Then she opened her mind.

_ Do I believe that the weak is food for the strong? _

I was born to kill, born with the razor instincts of an animal, born with the law of the jungle in my heart; that the slaying of other lives feeds mine. The blood of others becomes my wine. The flesh of others becomes my meat. The battlefield is my bed and the gun is my pillow. I was born to be this way, for my humanity to be numbed and worthless, only to be left with the cold, calculating brain of the highest species and the strength and speed of the strongest.

Because I was born to be Noir.

The line of thought came to a slow halt. Then another came, with assertion, like a ray of sunshine bursting out of a thunder cloud.

_But I became different from my predecessors. They took sides._

I did not. I kill both weak and strong, without discrimination.

For I know that justice is not meant to be taken into any human's hands, not even into the black hands of Noir. Amid the darkness, I try to find light. Amid my bloody nature, I try to find humanity.

But I have not found it yet, nor am I sure that I will ever find it.

But this I know. I am an assassin, a mercenary, a gun for hire, one who stains her hands with blood not for justice nor revenge, but for money. I cater to the highest bidder of my skills.

Does that me any better or any worse that my predecessors? Does that make me any nearer or even farther in finding the light?

I don't know.

But that is the only life I have ever known.

Mireille woke up.

She was strapped onto the reclined chair by thick leather belts, looking up at the bright, fluorescent lights of the white-washed room, dressed in the white laboratory gown she remembered wearing before being plugged into the DreamHub. Akira Kinomoto's face hovered above hers, concerned.

"Where am I?" she asked groggily in English, feeling bile rising from her stomach and to her throat, yet recognizing the young Gatekeeper.

"Who are you?" Akira replied tonelessly, despite the relief that immediately passed over his face.

Mireille felt confused, a million question suddenly launching from her brain. It seemed like her limbo between the two worlds was beginning again, given rise by those two questions that she had asked to herself what seemed to have been moments ago.

"Mireille Bouquet," she heard herself say in a faint voice. But she had no time to think of anything else because the nausea overwhelmed her and she suddenly jerked around, retching onto the floor and onto the wires that snaked over it. The computers were not humming and she had no nodes or visors attached on her.

Akira took a moist towel and patiently wiped her mouth with it, yet asking persistently, "But who are you?"

"Didn't you just hear me?" Mireille squirmed from the belts that restrained her. "Get me out of here."

"Tell me, _who_ are you?"

"_Sang du Christ_, I'm supposed to be a hitwoman, if that makes you happy!" the young woman exploded involuntarily from exasperation. "Why is everyone asking me that?!"

Akira's face suddenly cleared and a heartfelt grin spread from ear to ear. He quickly bent over her chair to unclasp the belts that held her, murmuring to himself, "_Arigato gozaimasu, Kami-sama, arigato._"

Mireille sat up as soon as she was free, feeling a little lost. Then the memories of what had happened during the fouled up mission came rushing into her head, filling her with panic at the remembrance of--

"Kirika!" she suddenly cried aloud, jumping up, but Akira restrained her, pushing her back to the seat.

"She's fine," he said reassuringly, gesturing at the chair beside hers.

Mireille instantly turned over to look, and the sight made her feel dizzy with pleasant surprise and relieved shock. There was no sign of violence on Kirika, not a bruise nor a drop of blood. She was asleep on the chair, strapped, dressed in the same gown with a calm expression on her face. Mireille could even hear her breathing.

The Corsican frowned despite the good news, the confusion starting again. There was something wrong here, something that was refusing to connect in her head. Something wasn't making sense.

On impulse, she checked her abdomen. There was no pain nor any sign of a bloody gash from the tip of a sword. Her arm was clean and smooth and her leg was in perfect condition. She was fine, and ironically, the thought suddenly made her feel afraid.

"There is no way that you could have healed us that quickly," she said coldly, turning back to Akira.

The young man hesitated and fidgeted with his glasses before saying, "No, there isn't."

"Some way or another, I'm not in the same 'world' that I was in the last time I was conscious," continued Mireille, "was I?"

Akira flushed, cracking his knuckles. "No."

"As I remember, Kirika and I were both severely wounded in the Real World, but there's not even a scratch on me, so we're obviously not in there. Second, I remember we were not to be pulled out back into Dreamscape until the mission was over, but this room we're in is suspiciously similar as the one in Dreamscape where we were first plugged in. So let's just stop all this-" and Mireille stopped herself just in time before she could swear, " - and tell me, just what is going on?"

Before Akira could answer, a sudden sound caught Mireille's attention and she whirled around to look at Kirika. Her eyes were open, empty and glassy, and she was staring up at the lights, unmoving and without expression, apparently not noticing Mireille.

"Kirika!" Mireille called, althought she was not sure why she did so.

Kirika turned her head to the sound of her voice, her eyebrows raised. Seeing Mireille, her forehead wrinkled curiously and she opened her mouth, saying in Japanese, "_Anata wa dare_?"

Mireille blinked. She must have heard wrong. Kirika had once taught her a few words and phrases of Japanese and this was one of them, straight from the book. She had just asked Mireille who she was.

"Kirika, this is not time to play around," Mireille replied in English, her voice a little unsteady from the little fear that had suddenly clutched her heart.

"_Gomen nasai, wakarimasen deshita_," Kirika immediately answered, apologetically.

Mireille heard Akira mutter a "_Shimatta_," before beginning to translate, "She said-"

"I know what she said," Mireille cut off bitingly. Kirika said that she did not understand...

Without warning, Mireille wrenched Kinomoto by the collar and flung him onto the wall with extraordinary strength. Like a rag doll flung away by a giant, Kinomoto's body flew and hit the wall with a hard, resounding crash and he crumpled to the floor without a sound, save his surprised groans. 

Mireille was immediately an inch from him, her face aflame with wrathful passion and her eyes bloodshot. Her hands were trembling as she grabbed his lapels and pushed him against the wall with her curled fists. She was panting irregularly, with the killer bloodlust in her eyes. Akira Kinomoto closed his own, knowing that even if she did not have her gun with her, she would be able to tear him apart with her bare hands as the adrenaline rushed across her body. But he did not resist.

"What have you done to her?" Her voice was raspy and guttural, near the verge of insanity as she pushed him even further against the wall, almost choking him. "I'll rip your lungs out, you piece of turd! What have you done to her?!"

Kinomoto made an effort to answer, but Mireille's hold was closing on him and blocking his windpipe, so crushing was her hold. His mind swam, desperately seeking for anything to say that might bring Mireille back to her senses. But he did not have to.

"_Yamette_!"

Stop. To Akira, it was the sweetest word in the entire Japanese language as Kirika screamed it, and the effect was like magic. Mireille froze, her eyes widening and her hold loosening from her visible surprise as she recognized Kirika's voice and she swung around, forgetting Akira as he immediately slid away from her grasp, taking huge gulps of air.

"Kirika!" Mireille was by the girl's side, holding her by her shoulders in wretched desperation as she brokenly tried to speak Japanese. "Kirika, _atashi ga_. Mireille! _Wasureru ka?_" Kirika, it's me. Mireille! Have you forgotten?

But the child wriggled from her clasp and shrank back from the frightening foreigner with the shock of yellow hair and flashing blue eyes, this crazy _gai-jin_ whose strength was like an ox and whose face like an angry demon.

"Kirika..." Mireille stepped forward, her heart beating in her ears, barely containing her emotions as the realization dawned on her. 

"_Iye_!" cried Kirika, immediately taking a step back, quailing. "_Anata wo shiranai_!" 

I don't know you.

Mireille tried to stop shaking but she could not. This was not Kirika. This quivering girl who came back with her was not the one she had gone away with. The Corsican felt lightheaded, as if she was going to faint, and she helplessly sat down on Kirika's reclining chair, the girl herself a few feet away from her. She had never felt so alone in her life. What was going on?

Akira Kinomoto was cautious as he neared Mireille, taking the gap between the two. "Mireille Bouquet," he said.

Mireille slowly looked at him, exhausted, the bloodlust lost and only a light of remorse left in her bright eyes.

"I will explain," said Kinomoto gently in English, "but it will be very difficult for you to understand, and more importantly, difficult for you to believe in because I know that by this time you would have lost all trust in us."

"Schwarz," murmurred Mireille, and it was dripping with venom. 

Kinomoto looked grave. "Yes, Wilhelm Schwarz." He turned around to look at Kirika and the girl stared back at him, not daring to near the blonde. He returned to Mireille. "Where shall I start?"

Mireile was now more composed and had gathered most of her scattered wits, although her palms were still beading with sweat. "Start at the beginning," she spoke, almost commandingly.

Akira nodded raked his black hair before acquiescing, "Then we must begin with the Soldats."

"Les Soldats!" Mireille's voice escalated and she rose from her chair in wary alarm, making Kirika jump as she looked around wildly. Where was her gun?

"What about the Soldats?!" she exclaimed urgingly.

"Schwarz is one of them," replied Akira, then he paused, trying to command himself before he added, "and so am I."

"What?!" Mireille was on full alert, part of the bloodlust back as she spaced out her legs, expecting a battle.

"This place we are in is in actuality the Japanese headquarters of the Soldat organization. Miss Bouquet, everything that Schwarz told you about the Dreamscape, the Great Game, the Real-World, you being your counterparts' avatars in a dream world, has been nothing but parts of a great and elaborate lie." The words streamed out of the flustered Akira's mouth as if he wanted to expel them as fast as he could. "There is no such thing as a Game or Dreamscape. There is no other world. This world we are now is the only one. All you have gone through has been a scheme of the Soldats to acquire the Noir. Both you and Ms. Yuumura have been duped."

"Wait, what...what scheme...you, you're a Soldat, why are you telling us...but we got injured, and..." Mireille dazedly steadied herself on the arm of the chair as she rambled almost incoherently, trying frantically to make sense of what Akira had just said. "What do you mean...why is Kirika...?"

Kirika looked at her at the mention of her name and Mireille silently met her gaze. The child shuddered and looked away.

Before Mireille could even feel the pang of hurt on her chest, they suddenly heard the loud and heavy footfalls of numerous steel-soled boots banging outside the door, heading for them.

"The Soldats." Akira shoved his glasses up his nose, a sudden, authoritative look on his face. "We have to get you out of here." He was about to grab Mireille's arm but she swiftly sidestepped him.

"I thought you're one of them," she said cagily, taking her position between him and Kirika.

"I am, but I'm from a different faction of the Soldats." The man's brow grew creased as they began hearing the Soldat men trying to bring down the steel door, locked by Akira. The bolts began to shiver.

"Different faction? What different faction?"

"I am an implant, a spy sent by Rene Graipaul to pull both of you out of Schwarz's plot; that's why I disconnected you and am telling you all this," said Akira hurriedly as he swept to the other side of the room, taking out a small screwdriver from his pocket and unscrewing the bolts of a medium-sized air vent near the floor. "This is really no place to talk; we have to get out of here."

"Rene Graipaul..." repeated Mireille, seemingly oblivious at the apparent danger they were in as she remembered the fiftyish Soldat who had let them through his men such a long time ago. "You mean there are two opposite factions in the Soldats?"

"There are a lot of factions in the organization," replied Akira almost testily, growing increasingly worried as he unscrewed the last bolt of the air vent and the banging on the door became louder and more aggressive, "but Graipaul and Schwarz's factions are the most heated." He took out the vent and gestured at them. "I will tell you everything later, but first, we need to escape. Those are Schwarz's men; they must have found that I had you disconnected."

"And you expect us to just take your hand and swallow everything you said." Mireille's jaw was set. "How stupid do you think we are to fall into the same thing twice?"

Akira paused and no one spoke. The men outside had loaded their firearms and had begun shooting at the door. The bullets made impressions on the steel door and one of the bolts fell off. The door creaked dangerously.

Then the Japanese slowly pulled out two black things from his pocket; they were their guns, the Walther and the Beretta. He handed the guns to the girls, one on each hand, the butts facing them, and him holding the barrels aimed lethally at his chest.

"Take them," he said. His eyes were pleading. "Do what you must to me. But while I'm still alive, I can do nothing else unless you _trust_ me."

Mireille hesitated. The gunshots became more and more alarming, and the door began to shudder from the force. Then coldly, "I will trust you, but only for Kirika's sake." Not waiting for an answer, she turned to the girl and stretched out her hand, saying as kindly as possible, "_Ikemasho_, Kirika."

Pale and wavering, Kirika mutedly evaded her reach, not looking at her.

"Yuumura-san," called Akira from the other side of the room, guns still in his hands, "_ikemasho_."

The frightened girl took one look at Mireille then at the direction of the rapid gunfire being thrown at the door and she quickly made her way towards the air vent, climbing in and moving swiftly away.

Mireille tried not to feel the hurt that was overwhelming her as she took the two guns from Akira, still heavy with unused bullets, and climbed into the vent after her.

***

The air duct was not large but it was roomy enough for them to make a quick escape before the Soldats smashed the door down. With Akira's directions, the duct would lead them to a main opening where all the air vent duct-holes in the whole facility ended, an opening where the elevator used to carry passengers from the facility to the surface made its passages up and down. Being underground, they would have to hop on the roof of the moving elevator as it goes up, and at the right moment, they should jump and tumble into the cybercafe's open-end air vent duct-hole just before the elevator stops in front of the cybercafe's door, which was the highest floor of the underground facility. If they were a second too late, they would miss the cybercafe's duct-hole and be tragically crushed head-first against the dead-end of the elevator passageway with the full force of the elevator behind them.

"How much farther?" asked Mireille as she moved on her hands and knees on the light metal duct, turning back to look at Kinomoto. They had been crawling in the air duct for minutes already. Kirika was in front of her, silent.

But the Japanese Soldat was not listening to her. In fact, he had stopped moving and had suddenly turned quite still, his eyes darting left and right.

"Kinomoto?"

He put a finger to his lips. "They're not coming after us," he said, sounding aghast.

Mireille made an impatient sound in her throat. "Shouldn't we be thankful for that?"

"They haven't made any alerts in the public address system regarding our escape and no one's thundering behind us in this same air duct." Kinomoto sounded almost close to panicking. "I'm sure they would have seen the unscrewed air vent back in the laboratory when they burst open the door, and I was willing to take that risk of having them chasing after us because I know you two could easily take on any thugs behind us in this cramped space...but why haven't they notified each other? Why haven't they sent anyone to catch us?"

"Maybe the Soldats were more moronic than we thought," Mireille said with annoyance as she was still drastically disoriented by the sudden twist of events. "We gave them too much credit. Now let's get moving. The quicker I get the answers, the better."

"Unless..." said Kinomoto, looking aghast, thinking out loud, "they know that we're going to take the surface elevator passage, since all air ducts lead to that." He blinked and narrowed his already small eyes. "You'd better get your guns out; they'll be ambushing us somewhere along the way."

An abrupt, horrid thought entered Mireille's brain. This strange Kirika who had cowered in front of her in fear would not be able to hold a gun properly, much less fire it without getting themselves killed in the process. This girl did not possess the abilities of Noir; this girl, by some wicked twist of fate, was now an ordinary teenager who did not lead a life by depending on her riflemanship...

Something flashed in Mireille's head, one of even greater importance to her. Wasn't this what Kirika wanted all along? To exactly be an ordinary, teenage girl who had never killed anyone, never fired a gun? Wasn't it?

"Kinomoto, tell Kirika to get behind us," she said tonelessly. "We will have to do the firing ourselves."

A minute later, they had changed positions, with Mireille leading, Kinomoto next, and Kirika last. Kirika had not said a word during the entire journey and had kept her large, expressive eyes downward.

"Chances are that they'll be posting gunmen on all the open-ends of the air ducts," Kinomoto was saying musingly as they neared their air duct's own end. He was now carrying his own Walther PPK in his palm and Mireille had both her and Kirika's guns in her hands. "We'll have to take them while we get on the elevator and try to shoot ourselves into the cybercafe's air duct. This will not be easy."

"Don't you have reinforcements with you or something?" queried Mireille, trying to visualize what sort of actions they would take when they reached the inner mechanisms of the surface elevator.

Kinomoto shook his head. "Mr. Graipaul knows that Schwarz has a nose for spies; one spy in his facility would already be a very big risk. It is in fact miraculous that I have not been found out until now." He looked up from behind Mireille and his expression changed. "Stop."

Mireille halted, raising her gun, her eyes questioning. They were facing a left-turn in the duct.

"This is it," said Kinomoto, raising his own gun and cocking it, his eyes level. "The last turn before the open-end of the duct."

"Keep Kirika behind us; don't let her take the left turn until we're finished." Mireille stretched her gun arm. "Let's do this then."

Mireille smoothly slid into the turn, gun aimed in front, and she was not disappointed. She was greeted by a panorama that seemed to come straight out of a video game. Her feet were steadied at the edge of their duct, of which a wrong slip would have them freefalling down a gaping chasm that plunged twenty stories down. She could not see the bottom without toppling over. Facing her, fifty feet away from her on the other side of the chasm, were centered on them six rows and six columns of open-ends of the air ducts, each duct having two gunmen dressed in black standing at the edge, rifles trained at their one solitary spot, like an entire chessboard of a firing squad. The other ducts that were the ends of the tens of rows and columns more that would not be of good location to target them were left empty.

Mireille felt a tick somewhere above her left eye as she watched the twenty-four, unmoving gunmen, disciplined and precise. Then she looked down gingerly for the elevator.

She blanched. The elevator was three stories behind them, but something about the length of time it was taking to move was very wrong...

Kinomoto too was looking down, horror-struck at the unexpected predicament. "The elevator is not moving," he said dumbly. "They cut off the power....we're boxed in."

Mireille brain registered the implications of this tactic as her heart sank.

"We're trapped."

**excitate, end**


	6. Invenite

** A/N:** Whoa, definitely the longest chapter in _Liberi Fatali_ so far. Can't believe I finished it in just two sittings, but hey, it's a school break, and I intend to make the most of it. XD This chapter is pretty much a very crucial turning point of the story and there's a lot of lengthy monologues because of all the explanations, but at least the difficult part's done. ^^ (@ Zerohour - no, I haven't seen Avalon ^^;;) 

Oh yes, apologies for Chapter 5; I gave Graipaul the wrong first name. My bad. It's supposed to be Remi, not Rene.

**Liberi Fatali**  
  
Chapter Six:   
Invenite 

  


The air was musty and thick.

Mireille pursed her lips, grimly staring at the checkerboard shooting squad. Then she looked down again at the unmoving elevator, and up to where the shaft to the duct of the cybercafe was. There was quite a distance.

Kinomoto sounded resigned and he had dropped his trigger arm. "My orders from Graipaul were as such: if we were to find ourselves in a predicament like this, I should get both of you out to the best of my powers. If I should fail, I must terminate myself, and perhaps you too. At all costs, we must _not_ be caught alive."

"You are much too pessimistic, Monsieur Kinomoto," Mireille murmurred, her brain rapidly assessing the situation. "This is not yet the end. We still have an advantage over them."

"What is that?"

Mireille nodded towards the gunmen whose firearms were trained at the three fugitives. "They were given the order not to kill, because if they had been otherwise, we would have been dead by now." A thin, hard smile laced the ends of her lips. "However, _we_ were given no such orders, much to our own fortune."

"Mademoiselle Bouquet, they still _will_ shoot."

"Not if they can help it." Mireille flicked her eyelids and looked at Akira with the corner of her eye shortly. "You have not told us the entire story, Kinomoto, but something tells us that Schwarz wants us alive." She checked the calibration of her pistols, nodding. "But like you said, it will not stop them from shooting. If we show the likeliest chance of escaping, there will be no restraint from them." Mireille paused and glanced up from the guns, looking behind Kinomoto. Her features softened. "How is she?"

"Frightened."

Mireille had already turned away, the moment gone, as she returned surveying the number of men they would have to take down. Her voice was emotionless. "We'll have to hurry. They will be sending more men behind us as we speak." Her eyes were busy checking the thick pipelines attached on the walls that led upwards. "We will have to scale up to the air duct by hand."

"What?" He was incredulous.

"Grab Kirika and have her hang from your neck down to your front torso. Shimmy up the pipelines with her, your back facing the gunmen. Act as her human shield; the pipes will hold your weight." She cocked her guns with steady, unfalteringly hands. "I'll cover you both. They won't be able to get all of us at the same time if we divide their efforts. I'll follow once I'm through."

Kinomoto had gently pulled Kirika out and she was clutching him tightly on the front already, but her large doe-eyes were still staring at Mireille. Much of her initial fear of Mireille had dissipated, but the Corsican could still see the lingering doubt in her eyes.

Kinomoto had only one thing to say as he grabbed a pipe and pushed his leg on the wall to brace himself, and it was the same thing she had been thinking of herself. "Can you do it on your own?"

Mireille lifted an eyebrow archly. "Twenty-four men?" She shifted her eyes to the panoramic view of the checkerboard and back to Kirika. "We'll just have to find out then, don't we?" She blinked and pursed her lips resignedly again before saying, "Take care of her."

Kinomoto swung out and hoisted himself up the pipes, with Kirika hanging under him.

The lone, flaxen-haired gunwoman watched silently as her opponents suddenly noted their targets' separate actions and radioed each other in panic. Not waiting for them to confirm their actions, she heaved a breath and slowly brought her guns up to chin level and fired.

And she truly realized that this was the first in a long time that she would have to fight on her own. She could only hope that she had not been too reliant on Kirika's unearthly skills to remember her own.

But there was not time for more epiphanies. The second she had let fly her first two bullets, the men had collectively recoiled as one of them died instantly the moment the bullet smashed his skull and the other received the other bullet in his vest, although not fatally. But the men left recovered speedily and four men, by some mutual understanding, methodically multi-tasked by having two concentrate on bringing Kinomoto and Kirika down while the other two began firing at Mireille, although with noticeable caution so as not to kill her. The other gunmen were still inactive, moving only to shoot by pre-meditated fours again if Mireille was finished with the former four, and this meticulousness unnerved her as it gave the very strong impression that they had a lot more men to spare.

And there was only one of her firing back. And she was bound to get tired soon.

Mireille swore under her breath as she evaded the bullets and tried to get a perfect aim at their perpetrators' foreheads. The chasm was of great distance and it was difficult to get a good aim through the thick, yellow dust of the chamber. She sidestepped a bullet aimed at her leg and whirled to fire blindly at the same direction. This awarded her with another infuriatingly-systematic rain of bullets aimed at everywhere except her forehead and her chest. 

No, this was not going to be a fast and intense stint, the one she was used to. Mireille narrowed her already-tired eyes. They meant to draw this confrontation into a long and tedious battle of nerves, and she knew all too well that she was on the losing side. It would be costly for Schwarz's men, yes, but they would be able to immobilize their targets without killing them. Schwarz was not one to be over-estimated. And he had men to spare, like a silent, chillingly-unmoving army of black.

She gave a quick glance at Kinomoto's progress as she awkwardly jumped up from a crouch, the duct she was standing on giving her not much free space. Carrying Kirika, the Japanese was halfway up the extend of the pipe to the cybercafe, as he had to shy away from the bullets aimed at himself and retaliate if he could with his own gun with one arm.

A bullet came frighteningly close enough, almost grazing Mireille on the arm. She winced reflexively as her other arm shot out and pumped lead, and then she heard the loud hob-nailed bootfalls from the back of her duct, dust sprinkling on her head as the force of their feet shook the duct. She paled. The others were coming for her.

"Kinomoto!" Mireille suddenly slid onto her back and flattened herself, two arms out and firing upside down. She gingerly shoved her head out into the edge of the duct and shouted, "They're coming!"

The footfalls grew louder and nearer and Mireille could already see their shadows coming for her. Her eyes widened. There was no time. In a moment's decision, she had swung herself from the duct and had clambered up against the pipe, her back exposed to the gunmen, and as she shimmied up the thick circular conduit, she could only pray desperately. 

Kinomoto and Kirika were nearly at the top, but before Mireille could take comfort at this, one bullet finally took advantage of her and drove deep, squarely, into her left thigh, piercing almost the bone. Mireille gave an involuntary cry as a supernova of nerves burst from her senses from the pain. Kinomoto spontaneously glanced at her at the sound, but she waved at him furiously away, blinking away her tears.

"Go! I'm all right!" she bellowed, starting to feel dizzy. She gripped the pipe harder with her white-knuckled hands and forced her other knee to push her up. Another bullet poinged just mere inches away from her and she almost let go from the terrifying proximity of the aim. She panted brokenly as she felt every sinew and muscle struggle tremblingly to pull her up. She was not going to last very long at this state.

_Arm haul, leg push, arm haul, leg push._ More bullets, and the interval between bullet ringing after another was getting shorter and shorter as the armed men became more aware of their escape. She cringed and looked up, her breath short and strangled. Only ten feet left. The two were already in the designated duct and Kinomoto was extending an arm towards her while simultaneously firing at some of the gunmen himself.

A pellet smashed into the pipe above her head, but the sudden sight of Kirika huddled uselessly beside Kinomoto had sent such a flood of fury coursing throughout Mireille that she became deaf to the ring of bullets as she doggedly pushed herself up inch by inch, foot by foot, fixated by the one single idea that she _must_ get Kirika restored to her old self, she _would_, she _had to_...

"Let's go," was what Kinomoto greeted her with as he finally pulled her up into the duct with them. They dropped to their knees and quickly made their way through the sinuous air duct leading to the cybercafe. Mireille had to bite her lip to keep herself from moaning as she felt her would split open afresh again and again...

When her sight began to cloud as she lost more blood, she was nearly at the verge of silent tears. This was too much to handle. This was too much for one girl to handle. Where was Kirika when she needed her-?!

An unexpected sob uncharacteristically welled inside her and tried to surface, but she quelled it and it came out as a strange, constipated sound. Her arms were weakening and her shot leg had lost all feeling. The air duct seemed to go forever. She sank closer to the ground and tried to grope her way. The gap between herself and the other two was widening increasingly. She shivered.

She only heard the sound of loud, booted footsteps before she unwillingly slipped into a wretched unconsciousness.

***

She could hear people talking in soft, muted whispers, but she could not catch the words. She was lying on something soft yet sturdy, and there was a numb, throbbing ache somewhere on her leg. 

Mireille opened her eyes. She was in a small, dark room, lit only by a small night light set on a desk where two vague figures were seated, whispering. A window was open, framed by curtains, and she could feel the night breeze entering the room accompanied by the sound of cars honking from far away.

She sat up with a groan, coming up from the sheets that had covered her, and the two figures by the desk turned to her at the sound.

"Ms. Bouquet." The relief in Akira Kinomoto's was instantly recognizable. The young man hastily made his way towards the side of his bed, leaving Kirika seated by the table. His right arm was slung in a cast and there was a piece of plaster on his cheek. "How are you feeling?"

"Where are we?" Mireille's voice was dazed as looked around in bewilderment, trying to get her bearings. "And what happened to you?"

"We're in a safe place now," he answered, pulling a chair to sit beside her. He tried to lift his broken arm and he winced, smiling feebly. "You passed out, but we carried you and managed to get out of there. Got some injuries along the way."

"Kirika-?"

"Just a few cuts and bruises. She's fine."

Mireille leaned back against the pillow, closing her eyes. "How long was I out? And how did you get out?"

"You've been sleeping for five hours. As to your second question..." Akira shoved his glasses up in apparent eagerness. "I had managed to radio for back-up to wait for us outside the facility, but we still couldn't have made our way out of that place if it wasn't for her." 

Mireille opened one eye. "Her? You mean Kirika?"

"Yes." Kinomoto shoved his glasses up again with such excited violence that they nearly fell off from his nose. "It was unbelievable, Ms. Bouquet, just unbelievable. It was like her body knew what she was doing, but her head didn't."

"What do you mean? What did she do? Are you sure she's unhurt?" Mireille was fully awake now.

"Yes, yes, yes, she is fine." Akira wrung his hands and he could hardly keep a broad, boyish grin from his face. "We have not lost her, Ms. Bouquet. As far as her muscle memory is concerned, she is still every inch the Noir that she is."

Akira paused and Mireille waited, suddenly hopeful.

"By the time we realized that you had fainted, we already had a squad crawling in the cybercafe's air duct towards us, and I really thought this was the end. I loaded a fresh magazine into my gun (I thought that I was at least going to die trying), but then Kirika suddenly snatched it away from me." Akira gestured incoherently. "It was like she was in a trance or something; she looked like she was possessed. Her eyes were all glassy and empty, but her body sure knew what she was doing."

"What _did_ she do?" asked Mireille impatiently.

"She killed all of them, Ms. Bouquet, every single one of the squad who came after us." Kinomoto thumped his hand on his knee with thrilled emphasis. "Every single one. She was shooting them right on their foreheads, killing them right and left, leaving no one alive. It was...it was like magic, Ms. Bouquet. She just _obliterated_ them, one shot for one head. No bullets wasted. I was carrying you and we just plowed through all of them." Akira shook his head in wonderment. "She is a strange and unearthly thing, Ms. Bouquet. Where did you manage to find someone like her?"

Mireille could not stop the smile on her face. "She came to me, Monsieur Kinomoto." She turned her eyes to the girl herself who was still staring back at her, unblinking. She hesitated. "But you said she was not herself when she was doing that?"

"No, she wasn't." Akira himself hesitated. "I am not sure how to explain this, Ms. Bouquet, but I don't think she was in full possession of her wits when she did that. It was like she was sleep-walking. I just can't explain it, miss. It was as if her body was doing all those without her conscious mind being in control of it. She acted only under the automatic muscle control directed by the cerebellum of her brain in reaction to a situation that asked for actions like those." He paused. "I am not certain, but I think this business of her not being able to remember her original self is merely psychological and not mental. It's just a state of mind she's trapped in. It's not brain damage or anything. The girl who came back with you here is the same girl, with the same muscle patterns and instinct of a fantastic assassin, _with the same brain_. When I unplugged both of you, Schwarz _had not yet_ managed to implant her with false memories nor had reformatted her consciousness, as I had initially feared. "Akira snapped his fingers in perplexity. "But there's just something in her mind - there's something keeping her from realizing who she really is." 

Mireille was quiet, although she had started visibly when Akira mentioned false memories and reformatting consciousness. Then she had looked thoughtful, bit back her anxiety, and said simply, "I think it's time you told us everything."

"First I'd better see if you're all right."

"But-"

"What I have to say will be a matter of great shock for you, Ms. Bouquet, and I want to make sure that you are in the proper condition to receive it. How is your leg?"

Mireille hurriedly drew away the covers from her leg to reveal her bullet wound neatly swathed in bandages. "It feels fine. You did this?"

"I had a Soldat paramedic disinfect it and pull out the bullet. It's not bothering you anymore?"

"I can hardly feel it. Thank you. Now you must tell me."

Much to her impatience, Akira stood up and and walked back to the desk where Kirika was, taking up a simmering bowl of soup and handing it to Mireille. "Here. Eat while you listen. You must regain your strength."

"_Thank you_."

"Good." Akira resumed his position on the chair, looking a little uncertain. "Where shall I start?"

"Try from the beginning." Mireille swallowed a spoonful.

"Very well. The Soldats will be a starting point as good as any." He bent and leaned his elbows against his knees, placing his chin on his knuckles, a faraway look in his eyes. "As I had said earlier, there are two most heated, warring factions in the Soldat organization. The faction headed by Graipaul, the one I come from, wants to wash their hands off this entire Noir business and leave you two alone. _However_, the other one, the one headed by Schwarz, wants to take Noir for their own machinations as the fueling power of the entire Soldat organization. You know the strength of Kirika, let alone _both_ of you; you have no idea what sort of power that would be in the Soldat's hands "

Mireille's eyes were fiery. "What do you mean, 'take' us? They can't just take us. We're our own persons; they can't force us into doing their work or-"

"But you see, Schwarz does not want _you_." Akira shook his head vigorously as he interrupted her. "He does not want _you_, per se. He wants your Noir-ness, the thing that makes you Noir, what makes you two tick, what makes you kill so effectively. He wants your skills. He does not need your person to empower the Soldats. All he wants is all in here." Akira tapped his head. "You heard me telling you how Kirika acted earlier only under the control of her technical brain functions and without her full consciousness. Now imagine if you could isolate and take note of Kirika's brain patterns in the middle of their function while she is killing and put it into someone else's head. That someone else is not traditionally Noir, but he or she would have the brain patterns _of_ one."

Mireille's eyes grew large and her mouth opened in horror. "What are you suggesting, Kinomoto?!"

Akira paused for breath. "Wilhelm Schwarz is a very accomplished theoretical neuro-scientist. He has earned numerous doctoral degrees and has won accolades all over the world. He is an an ambitious man, extremely loyal to the Soldat organization. He has worked long and hard and has invented something, extremely advanced for our times as he is sheer genius, that can isolate specific brain patterns during specific points of time, _copy_ that information, and actually _save_ it and _transfer_ it into a specified receptacle - namely, even another brain. The exact same concept as copy-pasting in a computer. It's genius." There was clearly a note of awe in Kinomoto's voice, despite his position. "Not everyone is aware of it, but everything we are, from our reflexes, motor skills, any sort of conscious and unconscious movement - _everything_ our body _does_ that we don't even know of - originates from the brain. See!" The young man was virtually beside himself and he was gesticulating wildly. "Even the hormones that are produced by our endocrine system is controlled by our pituitary gland, the master gland of the body, which is in turn under the control of the hypothalamus, located in our brain stem. Another: in our cerebrum lie basal nuclei neurons which help control subconscious movement involved in such activities as walking or eating. Even something as specific as that, can you imagine! And look, even our ability to produce and feel emotions is under the control of our limbic system, which is located in many parts of our brain!"

Mireille had stopped eating and her soup lay untouched.

"Think, Ms. Bouquet," continued Akira after he had calmed down a little, "think if you had the chance to take the finest species of mankind, the Noir, the one who is the strongest in this survival of the fittest - think if you could put them in such a dangerous situation so as to bring out the _best_ and the most brilliant of their survival skills, and then _isolate and copy_ their current brain patterns while they are fending for their life and displaying their best capabilities to survive. From their brain stem, you can record how how much adrenaline is being pumped out. From their cerebrum, you can record the activity of their acute sensory reception, even how they speak. From the cerebellum, you can record their sense of balance, posture, and the coordination of their muscle activity. And everything else in between; like what the Americans call 'the whole enchilada.' And that is only the tip of the iceberg! Mademoiselle, from both your brains, because of this device he has invented, Schwarz can take the information and create his own little army of Noirs!"

"The entire Dreamscape scam..." Mireille was aghast. "The entire Dreamscape business was just a means to record our..." Her voice petered out from the shock.

"Yes, you are catching on, Ms. Bouquet! Yes! The Dreamscape hoax was merely a way to have you display all your Noir-ness so Schwarz could observe your brain activities without your knowledge of it. In the very basic level, Dreamscape is just a very high-tech video game, set in a very difficult and realistic level, that you and Kirika were plugged into through your subconsciousness. The Dreamscape machine makes use of a hypothalamus regulator that gives you the illusion of reality by feeding you specific nerve impulses. It's like an artificial dream machine; when you fell asleep, it controlled your hypothalamus to control what you will dream of. Because of the illusion of reality of dreams, you truly believed that what was going on was real, which, as a result, forced you to display the best of your abilities _in your subconsciousness_ and made your brain react to the situation as it would accordingly."

Seeing that Mireille looked a little baffled, he obliged. "For example, why would you sweat after having a very bad dream when it didn't really happen? Because your brain was still reacting to it as if it had been real, and this is the exact concept Schwarz was using by imposing such dreams on you that required your brain to react to a dream as a Noir brain would react to a real situation. You also had nodes attached on you that received all the neuro-signals occuring in your brain as you 'played' the game and transmitted them into Schwarz's database. After he studies your brain patterns, he can discover what parts of your brain must be activated at what time during what activity, and he could produce nano-microchips of neurotransmitters with that same information to be implanted into other people's skulls to trigger impulses so they could 'move' or 'act' like you the same way your brain would react to situations. This is the emergence of nano-technology skull-sets already, things that only once existed in science fiction. Now he has made it into a reality. Do you remember all the things that were attached to you before you played Dreamscape? All of them were for this purpose."

The young man wiped his forehead. "This is his plan, Mademoiselle Bouquet; he will take the brains of Noir - simply put, the very essence of Noir - into an artificial neurotransmitter nano-microchip to be duplicated and implanted into the people of the Soldat. In the meantime, while his device still cannot _erase_ the patterns of the true Noir from their own brains, he can implant them with a microchip composed of false memories and he could do whatever he likes with you. He is, in actuality, 'pirating' Noir - producing bootlegs, in a matter of speaking, and keeping the only originals under his thumb. With this sort of power mass-produced into our people, the Soldat can virtually take over the world."

There was a long, pregnant silence. Then Mireille said, "So it boils down to that, doesn't it? The Take-Over-The-World ploy?"

"I did say he was ambitious, Ms. Bouquet; of course he would try to take the highest ruling position."

There was another pause until Mireille herself shook her head and muttered, "That is devilish - devilishly genius. I can't believe we actually _fell_ for that Dreamscape blabber."

"You can't help yourself, miss; right after the discovery that the Noir tradition was still alive under Altena, Schwarz suddenly was struck with this insane idea and he began to lay blueprints for the machines that would be needed and had everyone in his faction working 'round the clock, researching with him and manufacturing his devices. While you and Kirika and Chloe were barely out of diapers, Ms. Bouquet, he was already spending all those years agonizing over this, inventing his devices, making plans, keeping his eye on you through reports, sychronizing his machines, making his arguments as sound as possible, perfecting the entire scheme. The entire Soldat organization knew about this, but Graipaul's faction was the only one with enough clout to foil it, not to mention that he was the only one who thought it was unethical." Kinomoto gave a faint grin. "Enter me. Remi Graipaul had always been against this and he knew that it would be wise to know what was going on in Schwarz's facility, so he sent me to be a spy when I was old and accomplished enough to carry out a mission on my own. I was not famous in the Soldats, being new, and that made me useful; Schwarz didn't even think of me as coming from his opposing faction. For years, I worked under Schwarz and no one suspected the better, and I even got assigned to be the sentinel to Schwarz's facility, as you had seen my position in the cybercafe. So when Schwarz finally thought that it was time to put all of this into action, I was one of the first to know." He shrugged. "My mission was to pull you out of it as soon as I can and get you the hell out of there and out of Schwarz' grasp. Unfortunately, I was delayed because I still had to be careful that my cover was not blown, so by the time I got some alone-time with both of you, Schwarz had already been copying off a lot. And I do mean a _lot_."

"How much?"

He looked thoughtful. "I don't think he can create someone as lethal as Kirika as of now, because if I remember correctly, the gauge showing the progress of the copying was barely half-done when I came in. He can't produce someone as lethal as Kirika yet, but based from what was copied off from you and Kirika put together, I think he could already produce someone of your own caliber." 

"And this thing has been going on for _years_? Since we were little?" 

Akira had leaned back on his chair, looking exhausted after his long narrative. "Yes; you and Kirika are actually the last to be involved in it, although you two are the most important part of the entire scheme."

Mireille suddenly remembered something that Schwarz had said in her "dream" when he was "explaining" to them the details of his "Real-World mission" in "Switzerland": that he had long-formulated the plan of laying siege on Ramsey's fortress and that the two assassins were actually the last part of the preparation of the siege itself. Mireille shuddered as she realized what he had truly meant.

"But this doesn't expain what happened to Kirika," she remembered and said aloud. "You said that our own brain function patterns cannot be deleted or erased, and that Schwarz had not yet finished with us when you interfered, so that means he had not yet implanted any false memory chips in us because he needed us to remember ourselves while we were still plugged into Dreamscape. So why is Kirika -"

"...acting so strange? I don't know." Kinomoto looked genuinely puzzled. "I thought the machine devoted to her transfer of information must have malfunctioned when I pulled the main plug, but that wouldn't be right because her brain is still functioning all right and Schwarz's machine does not extend to anything related to individual human memory. He's only concerned with body functions. So I can't fathom why she has forgotten everything about you; only that I think it is psychological and that it's actually..." Akira furrowed his brows and tried to put it delicately, "...self-imposed."

Mireille blinked. "Self-imposed? You mean she's deliberately..._forgetting_ me?"

"Not necessarily _you_," said Kinomoto hastily. "I'm sure this isn't anything personal. But the transition she must have undergone when I pulled you both out must have traumatized her and made her alter her sense of identity. That's why I had to make sure you remembered who you were when you woke up."

A bell rang at the back of Mireille's head with urgency. Yes, she remembered that transition she had to go through when Kinomoto pulled her out of Dreamscape, that sort of limbo with only bright light surrounding her, where she kept asking herself who she was. She kept remembering that she was Mireille Bouquet, assistant to a bookstore-keeper, but she knew something was missing. And just before she had awakened, she remembered that she was Noir.

Kirika, for some reason or another, had not. And everything that was related to Noir, she had forgotten in the process.

Could it be possible that Kirika wanted to be normal _so much_ that she didn't even _want_ to try to remember who she truly was? That she got so attached to her so-called 'dream' identity that she was going to forcefully make it a reality?

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that, Ms. Bouquet." Kinomoto's voice brought her back out of her thoughts and made her realize that she had been thinking aloud. "What did you say?"

Mireille's eyes traveled to the ceiling, as if searching, for an answer before they rested back on Akira and she set her mouth in a thin, cold line. Then she gave her hair a proud, characteristically-Gallic toss. "Well, Schwarz will soon be having someone like us running around, and that is _seriously_ going to cramp our style, at the very least. So when do we start?"

**invenite, end**


	7. Tenebras

** A/N:** Hm. I just noticed that the summaries are starting to get vaguer and vaguer. Believe me, it'll get even more ambiguous by each chapter, lol. And, um, don't worry, Zerohour, I promised myself that this will be the first multi-chaptered fic that I'll actually finish. XD 

**Liberi Fatali**  
  
Chapter Seven:   
Tenebras 

"You understand the gravity of the situation, of course. Ms. Bouquet. Schwarz was not authorized to instigate any sort of movement related to the Noir before the Soldat Council made a final decision between the factions. What he has done is tantamount to mutiny and makes him liable for arrest as far as the Soldat organization is concerned." 

"And that was why you had reinforcements secure the underground site when you got us out of there."

"Exactly. Reinforcements called me back when we arrived here and gave a report. They had waited until we had safely escaped and then they managed to infiltrate the facility. Unfortunately, because of their concern over our safety, they were a little too late in fulfilling the mission. Some people of Schwarz's faction were caught, but -"

"Schwarz escaped, didn't he? He seems diabolically clever enough to do so."

"Not only that, but he managed to take the Noir data with him. The machines were still left there and there's enough evidence to have him...er, eliminated permanently from the organization, but that's not going to be worth anything if we don't find him first."

"Any idea how he got out of that underground dungeon of his?"

"His escape was too clean. My men have been constantly reporting back between intervals of thirty minutes of investigation, but they still haven't found anything. It is as if he simply vanished. And his people that were left behind won't breathe a word."

A pause. "Dead end?"

"Thankfully, no. Our faction, under the direction of Mr. Graipaul, has been hard at work in acquiring as much information about Schwarz's little project as possible all this time, and we were able to obtain a great deal about his potential control centers in case we were found out too early."

"How?"

"We'd been spying on Schwarz for a very long time now, Ms. Bouquet. Everytime we discover a hideout of his, we'd immediately send a squad to install some bugs and miniature cameras all over the place to monitor its activity. So far it's been quiet." 

"I find it hard to believe that Schwarz didn't discover that."

"Well, we can't say for sure, and who knows, all the information we ever got could merely be hoaxes, but that's the risk we have to take. This is all we can work with. At least he can't blame us for not trying."

A password prompt appeared. There were some clicking sounds on the keyboard.

"These are the three possible locations that Schwarz may be holed in right now. We used the Soldat's global positioning satellite system to map out each of the structures of Schwarz's hideouts into cyber-navigational systems." 

"My, I'll have to get one of those soon. You certainly do your homework well, Kinomoto."

"We all do, Ms. Bouquet. The Soldat organization did not last for centuries for nothing."

Mireille glanced up from Kinomoto's laptop where navigational online blueprints flashed and reflected in her eyes, revealing three separate panels of virtual structures and corresponding charts and information. One was in Japan, one in Germany, and one in Russia. "This is relatively all very well and good, Kinomoto, but something's still bothering me."

Kinomoto leaned against the table, coffee cup in hand. "Yes?"

"What do the Soldat's get out of this? Everything Schwarz is doing is obviously to the advantage of the organization." Mireille crossed her legs at the ankles and she wore a look of mild curiosity. "If that's so, then why is there a huge faction of the organization opposing it? You said that it was because Graipaul thought it unethical, but frankly, I don't quite believe that the Soldats as a whole has words like 'ethics' and 'morals' in their vocabulary."

"'As a whole,' Ms. Bouquet?" The young man bent his neck and sipped some coffee, smiling wryly. "You are homogenizing the entire organization, Miss, which is fatal. Do not judge us merely because of your experience with a few. You give us too little credit for our basic humanity; we're really not as mechanical as you think. At least not all of us." He chuckled. "There are also struggles between blocs in the organization regarding not only power but also of ethics of how the organization should be run." He raised an index finger. "Similarly, you may not be very aware of it, but Remi Graipaul speaks very highly of you two not only of your combat skills but also of your rights as human individuals."

"I see." Mireille did not sound convinced but her curiosity appeared mollified. She returned to the online cartographs displayed in the laptop. "Any gut feeling that may direct you to a guess regarding which of these three places would Schwarz be hiding his sorry ass in?"

Akira Kinomoto was smiling. "Based on the extreme advantage Schwarz has over us, I wouldn't say his bottom would be very apologetic at the present moment."

"Clever, Kinomoto, but not to the point," returned Mireille good-naturedly, the very first hint of comfort entering her voice. She glanced at the reflection from the mirror of Kirika, who was sitting on the bed, eyes distant as usual. She seemed so stripped yet at the same liberated, so unlike the closed and angst-ridden girl she knew. Now she was merely a small slip of an ordinary Japanese teenage girl, understandably confused of all the rapid events revolving around her, wishing she was back with her friends in the karaoke bar. It was terrifying how people could change so fast.

"Ms. Bouquet? Ms. Bouquet."

Kinomoto was waving his hand in front of her.

"Sorry, I got a little distracted," said Mireille apologetically as she mentally kicked herself, yanking her eyes back to the laptop. "You were saying?"

Kinomoto was tapping a section of the LCD screen that showed the detailed image of a sprawling, abandoned Japanese pavilion located in the heart of the Wakkaido province of Hokkaido. "I think I'd bet on this place."

"Care to explain?"

"For one, it's the quickest place he can get to. Second, and more importantly, we're in Asia, where the Soldats are considerably weaker. The organization's branches are strongest in European countries because they're nearer to the main headquarters in France, and being such, I don't think he'd risk fleeing to Germany and the European part of Russia where he can easily be apprehended." Kinomoto removed his glasses to rub his eyes. "Third, my Soldat visa for the Euro regions has expired, come to think of it, and so has my Russian one."

"It's a good a hunch as any, so we'll just have to take your word for it." Mireille moved the mouse and zoomed in on the image, enlarging the Japan chart to the full size of the screen. She could see the red paint peeling off the roof shingles and the small, stone dragon finials perched in single files on the ridges of the gables. She peered at the information box at the lower right corner. "It's an ancestral temple?"

"Used to be the shrine of an obscure branch family of the old Sugawara clan that must have traveled upstream. It dates pretty way back, maybe mid-Tokugawan. For something of it's age, it's pretty well-kept." Kinomoto was yawning and the fatigue was unmistakable in his eyes. "Can't be too sure when Schwarz managed to get a hold of it, but it must be just after the last of the branch family's bloodline died. The location's terribly convenient for someone like him, though, it being isolated in Hokkaido. And it's really close to Asian Russia, where he could easily jump ship and make his way to Siberia, if necessary."

"I wouldn't be suprised if he 'eliminated permanently' the caretakers of that shrine exactly for that purpose," commented Mireille darkly as she investigated the cartograph further. "How's security there?"

"Pretty tight." He squinted and Mireille noticed his dark eyebags. "We nearly lost a number of spies there when they almost walked right into the central courtyard that was virtually a mine field. Fortunately, someone had enough good sense to know that when people say 'Keep off the grass,' they really do mean it."

"Look-outs?"

"Around the perimeter and over and above. And each hallway has at least two guards and each room has at least one."

Mireille paused. Kinomoto had closed his eyes, his head leaning against the wall.

"Kinomoto?"

He held up his hand, lids still down. "Just resting my eyes, but I'm still here."

"I think you'd better get some sleep. Kirika and I have been sleeping and dreaming for a long time, but you won't be of any use if you keep this up."

The radio on his belt squawked and he picked it up, mumbled something to it, then clipped it back, finally sliding off the table. "Yeah, I think you might have something there, Ms. Bouquet. I've been up for a pretty long time." He nodded gratefully. "I guess I can leave you here since everything you need to know of the place is in that database, but in case you have to really ask something or if the house is on fire, don't hesitate to call me. I'll be in the living room."

"I'll be studying the structure and the activity patterns of the place. We'll start for Schwarz tomorrow morning."

"Roger that."

"Good night, Kinomoto."

The Japanese bowed. "Good night, Ms. Bouquet, Ms. Yuumura."

_Ms. Yuumura_, thought Mireille as she dove deeper into the bowels of the temple with the click of the mouse. She had almost forgotten Kirika during the course of their conversation; the girl seemed to be that irrelevant to the discussion that had transpired earlier, like a peripheral object that was there by accident.

_She doesn't seem to be resenting it, though_, thought Mireille wryly, looking up at the reflection of the mirror again. Kirika was lying on her side on the bed, her back facing Mireille. _On the other hand, what on earth are we going to do with her tomorrow?_

Mireille gave the ENTER key a more-than-usual violent hit, which drew her into a corridor. One thing was for certain: they couldn't very well just leave her behind tomorrow, but Kirika was consequently going to be a huge liability to them during the siege, that's flat. The thought disconcerted Mireille immensely.

"Kirika," Mireille called her after finally deciding that she wouldn't be able to concentrate on her business if she didn't try to resolve this matter first.

The girl did not move, but when Mireille called her louder, she rolled and sat up, her eyes staring back at Mireille, challenging her with its lack of recognition. The sheets ruffled at the movement.

"Kirika, the situation at hand is too complex to explain," began Mireille in her best broken Japanese. Then she stopped abruptly, at a loss.

Then Kirika opened her mouth and quietly let out a stream of Japanese of which Mireille tried hastily to catch and managed to extract the gist of it, which was, "Are we going to kill someone tomorrow?" Mireille knew the word "korosu" very well, naturally.

"Well...yes," replied Mireille after much deliberation. No use hiding it from her anyway, she reasoned to herself. Best that she be aware of the situation as much as possible, or else she might bungle it up even more with her ignorance. "Yes, we are. That's why it's going to be quite dangerous." She stopped again. Then at a desperate attempt to spark some sort of memory, Mireille blurted out, "Don't you remember anything at all? About Chloe? Or Altena? _Anything_?"

Kirika stared at her blankly and Mireille realized that she had just spoken in complete and flawless French.

"Never mind," she said faintly, swiveling the chair back to face the laptop. She pressed a few buttons as she bit her lower lip, the view zooming into a room, and she tried to concentrate on the contents of the room so as to keep Kirika out of her head. There was a guard, a desk, two computers, and a clock inside the room.

An analog clock.

Mireille frowned.

With numbers and three hands.

Mireille drew her fingers away from the laptop then she slowly turned the chair back to face Kirika. The girl was huddled on the middle of the bed, hugging her legs and her eyes downcast.

And Mireille began to hum. Trying to keep the tremble from her voice, she intoned the melody of the old golden pocketwatch, the one that was lying somewhere with its glass face cracked, the one that began this whole business in the first place. Mireille had never fancied herself much of a songstress, but this was no time to be shy. There had always been something eerily organic in the notes of that old melody, something distinctly ancient and regal that produced an pathos that was unique only to herself and Kirika and their black hands...

Kirika had looked up at the sound and her eyes were shining. It wasn't recognition, but there was something there, and whatever it was that was making her eyes regain a luster, it was definitely intense, noted Mireille as she tried to keep her own eyes from welling. Kirika was now sitting at the edge of the bed, gazing at Mireille with squinted eyes, asking softly, "_Anata wa...dare?_"

Mireille was about to hum the melody for the third time around when she was interrupted by the creaking sound of a door opening. She stopped, and Kirika jerked up, hearing it too.

Then there was utter silence. Kirika's eyes had locked with Mireille's, filled with apprehension. The blonde put a finger to her lips and her face was tight, her ears straining. Her hand crept for her gun and she hoped it was only Kinomoto going up for the toilet.

Another sound broke out; it was slight and muffled, but it was enough to widen Mireille's eyes and have her fling open the door of their room and make a dash towards the living room.

Mireille's startling entrance made the two masked men who were standing in the middle of the room turn around. Taking advantage of their shock, Mireille scanned the room wildly. The door of the apartment room had been opened without any sign of violent intrusion. Outside the door and in the hallway she saw the boots of two prostrate figures on the floor who had been guarding them. The two intruders, clad from head to toe in padded black and being heavily armed, were standing over a sofa where Kinomoto's limp feet portruded out with his white socks. The sound Mireille had heard had been the sound of a silencer muffling a fired bullet.

Then every object in that room except for Kinomoto's motionless body seemed to leap into action. Both gunmen swung their rifles at Mireille, but she had grabbed the huge lamp atop the table beside the sofa first and had hurled it to them. Both gunmen fired and drilled holes into the flower-print lampshade as Mireille evaded the shattered shards of glass, drawing out her own gun with both hands and pulling the trigger twice.

The two bullets flew and hit their targets faithfully, one on each chest. But the two men only staggered and recoiled from the impact, dropping their rifles, a little breathless but still standing. Mireille narrowed her eyes. Bullet-proof vests.

She was ready to aim at their foreheads, but before she could, the quicker of the two pulled out a small canister from one of his numerous pads, and in one swift motion pulled out the pin with his teeth and threw it towards Mireille.

A colorless vapor escaped from the can and a faint, sweetish smell diffused into the room. Mireille fell to the ground, only an elbow supporting her, as she hacked and coughed, her eyes stinging as she saw in her mind's eye how the nerve gas would circulate in her bloodstream. Her temples throbbed and she groped for the gun that she had dropped, thrashing wildly when she felt one of them roughly lift her up, taking care not to breath too much. She aimed a kick with her stiletto boot towards the end of his pelvic section and the man howled an expletive as he inadvertently dropped her back on the floor. She groaned from the impact, and, mustering the last of her consciousness, swung her leg to sweep him off his feet. He fell down with a loud thud, his head squarely hitting the wooden end of the sofa, and his eyes rolled backwards into his skull.

The other had pulled out his radio and was barking orders into it from the other end of the room, a distance from the thicker concentration of the nerve gas. Upon seeing Mireille struggling to rise, he immediately aimed his firearm at her and was about to fire when a blur shot out of the other room, leaped into the air, and grabbed his head. There was the sound of bone cracking and the gunman fell limply, rifle slipping out of his fingers and the radio crushed under his weight. Kirika was standing over him silently.

"Kirika!" Mireille coughed, remembering to speak in Japanese. "We have to get out of here! The whole room's being filled with nerve gas!" She fumbled over the phrases, especially over "nerve gas," but it was clear Kirika understood the urgency of the situation. The younger girl immediately ran back into the bedroom, covering her face with her sleeve, and came out carrying Kinomoto's laptop, the wires dangling from her arms. Mireille had flung open the windows and had let the sharp, crisp wind into the room to air it. She had shut the door to prevent the nerve gas from spreading.

"Come," said Mireille, one leg already out of the window, her golden hair billowing with the breeze. "I'm certain there will be some rather unpleasant people waiting for us if we take the elevator." She didn't care now that she was speaking in complete French once again. Kirika seemed to understand. It was during matters of life and death that all languages became one.

Kirika swiftly handed her the laptop and slid outside the window, stepping into the makeshift balcony railing and the fire escape ladder beside each room of the steep apartment. They were on the twelfth storey. Taking care not to look down, she quickly pattered down the steps, her small hand sliding down the bannister smoothly. Mireille was not far behind her, her boots making a clamor against the metal levels, while keeping an eye out for any unpleasantries that may accost them among the loud neon advertisements and the din of metropolitan Tokyo.

Just when they had reached the end of the second floor's fire escape ladder, a small spotlight from below suddenly ascended on them and centered on their figures. Both of them froze and Mireille's heart jumped up to her throat.

"I think we're low enough here; we'll jump on three," she said through gritted teeth as she shielded her eyes from the glaring light coming from a spot in the darkness below, some twenty meters way from them. "It could be Graipaul's men, but I'm not taking any chances." She heaved a breath and felt exhilirated, despite herself. It was beginning to feel like old times again.

"Ichi..."

Kirika was rubbing her arms. The air was biting cold.

"Ni..." Mireille gripped the metal railing, muscles tense.

"San."

The two figures suddenly disappeared from the spotlight. One had leaped over the railing; the other had slipped under it. The spotlight went berserk.

Mireille winced as she landed. The jump had been more precipitous than what she had expected and she had sprained her ankle. There had been nothing to break her fall except for the hard concrete of the back alley. She twisted her neck. Kirika had alighted nimbly on her two feet, the jump obviously not much of a challenge to her.

"_Daijoubu desu ka?_" asked Kirika with a considerable hint of concern, seeing her companion limping and remembering her intake of the nerve gas. But the older woman waved dismissively, only tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and answering dryly in her strange, fluid language. 

"We'll be going through much worse than this," Mireille was saying as she straightened her clothes. "Come, we'd better go somewhere out of sight." The spotlight was slowly descending on them and she was starting to hear the pit-pat of boots towards them.

They made their way deeper into the dark alley, scaling over a wire fence and picking their way among the trashcans and the usual backstreet filth. A cat yowled and ran across them, screeching.

"By the way," Mireille had stopped and had pulled out a gun from her pocket. "I think this is yours."

Kirika looked at it, expressionless. But she opened her palm without question nor protest and Mireille handed it to her. She closed her hand on it and quickly pocketed it. Then she reached out and grabbed Mireille's wrist.

Mireille stared at her hand. "Yes?"

"_Kinomoto-san wa..._?"

The blonde looked at her eyes and said as gently as she could in Japanese, "He's dead, Kirika."

"I see." Kirika let go of her. She didn't look surprised.

"And now I have something to ask you, Kirika." Mireille felt some slight comfort every time she spoke the girl's name and the girl would respond by looking at her. At least she recognized it. "How did you learn to fight like that?"

"_Wakarimasen_; it was as if I just knew. But I don't remember how. It is very strange."

There was a small pause where no one moved. Then Kirika slid her hands down her knees and bowed deeply. "_Domo arigato gozaimasu_."

"Excuse me?"

"I must be going home now to my parents; it's very late," the girl said simply. "Thank you for helping me."

"Home?" Mireille was about to say that she had no home, but she wisely caught herself and tried to be diplomatic. "But Kirika, you can't."

Kirika's eyes flickered. "Why not?"

"Because...well, there are men all over the city looking for you and it won't be safe to lead them to your home, would it?"

"But why are they looking for me?"

"They have...something they want from you." Mireille's hands were starting to feel clammy and she could feel the perspiration sticking on the laptop cover, the same way the Japanese words were starting to stick in her throat.

"But what do they want from me?" Kirika's voice had risen, and, to Mireille's utter amazement, had switched to French without even knowing it. "I have never seen you or them in all of my life; why am I involved in this?"

Mireille struggled. Then she put her hands on Kirika's shoulders and gripped them, trying to think clearly. "Kirika...Kirika, things are not what they seem to be. You're not who you think you are."

Kirika shook her away and shrank back, the fear unmistakable. "What do you mean?!"

Mireille could not answer.

The girl bowed again, hurriedly this time, and was about to dart off, but Mireille caught her arm and before Kirika could utter a cry of pain, she whispered quickly, "At least let me accompany you to your home. It's not safe for you to be alone."

Kirika was staring at her, the suspicion heavy. She was trembling. "But why?! What are you going to do to me and my family? What have we ever done to you?!"

"I don't mean you any harm!" Mireille said desperately, holding on tightly, knowing that if she released her, she would never find her again. "How could I? I'm the only one you have left!"

"What?! What do you mean?"

"Just...at least promise me that you'd let me come with you." Mireille swallowed a lump in her throat as inconspicuously as she could. She was shaking uncontrollably and her eyes were twitching, the stress she had been through finally taking its toll on her. "If we reach your place and if you're fine with it, then you'll never see me again. But if you don't like what you see there, you'll have to come with me. There's no other place you can go."

"Why shouldn't it be fine with me?" replied Kirika brusquely, finally yanking her arm free from Mireille's hold. "Mother and Father have taken a break from America to come home and spend some time with me for a week. We went to the mall this morning." And without another word, she began walking away.

Mireille silently followed her as they returned to the main street and moved under the starless, neon-hazed sky of the city. Kirika flagged a cab and they got in, with the girl telling the driver the address. Mireille recognized the route they were taking: it was the same one they had taken the first time she met Kirika, the one that led to Kirika's house. She dug her nails into her sweaty palms, feeling the dead weight of Kinomoto's laptop.

When they reached Kirika's old two-storey, split-level home without event, the Japanese girl immediately clambered up the porch to the front door. All the lights were out. Kirika started fishing for something in her pockets, then she stopped and began patting herself.

Mireille waited patiently beside her, shifting her weight and dreading what was about to happen.

"I must have dropped my keys somewhere," defended Kirika with a tone of rebelliousness that matched the bright defiance in her eyes. Mireille gave no answer, though she knew where Kirika's door key was: it was safely hidden in an apartment room in Paris some hundreds of thousands of miles away from them. Days before this disaster struck, both of them had decided to reside at a hotel during their stay in Japan.

After a moment of deliberation, Kirika reached up and rang the doorbell. Mireille looked at her watch. It was half-past ten in the night.

Kirika rang again, this time pressing the button even longer. There was still no answer.

"Kirika," Mireille ventured cautiously, bracing herself, "I don't think anyone's home."

Kirika ignored her and stubbornly held her finger on the button. The ring became a perverse, vibrating shrill that echoed around the empty house and bore through Mireille's eardrums.

"Stop that!" The Corsican angrily cuffed the other arm's away from the doorbell and the sound broke off curtly. "It's not going to do you any good!"

Kirika fell silent, confused.

Softening, Mireille moved towards the left windows perpendicular to the door and took her gun, shattering a glass pane with it. Balancing herself atop the fence, she hoisted herself up and slid her arm through the splintering crevice, reaching for the doorknob. It was some distance away and she winced as her bare arm grazed a sharp edge of glass and blood spurted out, but she managed to twist the doorknob and the door opened with a creak.

It was pitch-black and hushed inside.

Kirika entered without a sound, flicking a small lamp on from the foyer. The sick yellow bulb flickered and threw weak shadows and light around the living room, revealing the unused furniture stacked on one side of the room and a moldy rug on the tatami-matted floor. Cobwebs dotted the ceiling and dust was everywhere. 

The Japanese girl looked uncertain, walking around in a dream. Her hands wiped the thick dust caked on the walls and she looked at her dirty fingers as if she couldn't believe her eyes. She called for her parents twice, but her voice only echoed mockingly back at her as she went from room to room. There was no one, no letter left for her, no sign that anyone had lived in the house for a long time. Everyone had vanished.

She dashed up the stairs and threw open the door of her bedroom. There were crates piled up at the corner of the room and the blinds were drawn shut. There was nothing else. The dust was suffocating.

Her footfalls were heard all over the house as she wildly crashed into her parents's bedroom, her chest heaving. There was no big bed in the middle, no long desk at the side with scattered papers, no two-closet wardrobe. Even her mother's vanity table and her full-length mirror had disappeared only to be replaced by more gray crates and covered boxes. The curtains were grimy.

"Where is everybody..." she asked flatly, slipping down her knees. She clenched her fists against the carpet, her knuckles turning white. "Why have they left me?!"

Her voice escalated and her words broke into sobs.

Downstairs, Mireille sat on one of the dusty armchairs, enveloped by the dark of the house, remembering how she had felt during the night of the Corsican massacre.

**tenebras, end**


	8. Surgite

**A/N:** Apologies, I made a mistake in terminology again. It's the Wakka**nai** province in Hokkaido, not Wakkaido.

**Liberi Fatali**  
  
Chapter Eight:  
Surgite 

The wheels of the train rumbled deeply against the metal rails. The view of the farmlands and rice paddies under the blue, cloudless skies, swept past continuously, only intermittently interrupted by the tall telephone poles and electric lines. The sight of a cow looking up curiously from its pasture while chewing its cud would appear, then as the train roared past, be replaced by endless green meadows again. The mountains behind them towered mightily over the scenery, some of the tops still capped by mantles of last snow. The sun was bright.

Sitting by the aisle, Mireille's focus readjusted to glance at Kirika's reflection on the window. The girl sat beside her on the window seat, her sullen face rigidly turned away from her and to the view from the train.

Mirelle looked at the two ticket stubs in her hands. They had flown from Tokyo to Sapporo, the capital of the island of Hokkaido, and had boarded the train to Wakkanai. She leaned against the cushion on the seat, closing her eyes. Exhausted from having spent the entire flight to Sapporo absorbed in studying the information Kinomoto had left them, she had accidentally dozed off into bliss during most part of the train ride and had woken up in panic, unable to remember where she was and what she was doing in a train. But the sight of the brooding Kirika beside her caused everything to come back painfully and to remind herself that this was going to be one of the precious moments where she could afford to sleep as peacefully as possible.

Kirika never slept. She sat on the same position she had taken since they boarded the train, never moving, only staring stonily outside of the window. Mireille was very much perturbed by her unyielding behavior. Of course, Mireille had long been accustomed to Kirika's long silences and statuesque attitude, but in the past she had been reassured that she and Kirika were on the same boat, at the very least. Now, however, she wasn't even sure if Kirika wouldn't suddenly snap and bring out her gun and kill everyone on sight.

_It would be so easy to kill her now, come to think of it_, mused Mireille, her mind going back to that old moldy promise she had given the girl. Kirika wasn't the same girl now anyway. She was a little less than a human being and just a little more than a rock. It would be so temptingly simple to just pull out a gun, cock it, place it against the back of her head (she wasn't watching anyway), and pull the trigger ever-so-slightly-

Mireille blinked, inwardly shaking that such a thought should occur to her. The rumbling sound of the train assailed her ears and she was grateful for the distraction. She must be going out of her mind. She tapped her companion. "Kirika."

Kirika only raised her eyes to look at Mireille's reflection, motionless.

"I have to go to the toilet. Keep an eye on this." Mireille tapped the laptop as she rose from her seat. Not waiting for an answer, she hurried towards the end of the car, opening the double doors and entering the next car. She slipped into the small lavatory cubicle and snapped the light on.

She stared at her reflection on the mirror. Her hair was tangled and there were rims around her eyes. Her skin was dry and paler than usual and her right arm had been bandaged by Kirika the night before.

Mireille bent to turn the tap on and splashed some water on her face, blearily looking back at the mirror again before ripping off a paper towel and rubbing herself dry. Then she pulled the topmost cover of the toilet down and sat on it, placing her elbows on her knees and resting her chin on her hands as she felt herself go limp from her weariness and finally give a sigh. If only it was possible for her to just disappear from the world for just one day. One day. The world didn't need her that much that it could at least spare itself one day of her, couldn't it?

She yawned and stretched, leaning back and rubbing the flesh between the her eyes and the bridge of her nose with two fingers. Unfortunately she had a responsibility to carry out, a responsibility that should be shared among three people but was now thrown upon only her. Some life. If she should ever get out of it alive, she was going to draw a hot bath the second she got home and have a long, warm soak, with broken bones and wounds and all.

And there was, of course, the matter of Kirika, she thought bleakly. Kirika's safety was the last thing on her mind; that girl could take care of herself even if she was knocked unconscious. She was built that way - her whole body had been conditioned to react to anything with self-preservation acting as the foremost basis, like some sort of Pavlovian fighting machine. But if her body was the strongest, her mind was in turn the most vulnerable. Her history of trauma had made it so unbelievably unstable - apparently the idea that 'What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger' didn't quite apply to Kirika's psychology.

Law of compensation, of course. Most of what made up Kirika had been sacrificed to the perfection of her physiology and, as a result, so little had been provided for her psychological well-being, if not none at all. In other words, Mireille reasoned gloomily, the chances of getting the old Kirika back were hideously few. First of all, she didn't think that self-induced amnesia could be cured by just mechanically activating her old memories back, assuming that they could defeat Schwarz and that he actually had some crazy machine that could do it. It was, after all as Kinomoto said, purely psychological, which meant it would be ultimately up to Kirika to trigger herself back, which, putting it mildly, would be quite unreliable.

Amnesia. What Kinomoto had theorized about Kirika's predicament wasn't too far-fetched; Mireille remembered reading somewhere that emotional shock could be a possible cause of amnesia. She was a little fuzzy as to what could cure it, though, and besides, neurologists haven't quite made much headway in the matter either. Maybe it involved placing the person in a familiar situation or emotion that could trigger something and unlock those memory cells?

It sounded like something that could come out of a soap opera, she thought wryly, but right now she was willing to grasp at any straw. But _d'accord_. Assuming that Kirika would never get her memories back, then what would its ramifications be? What would it mean to Mireille?

Mireille ran her fingers across her hair. What would it mean to her? Regret, perhaps. The Kirika she was with now wasn't the Kirika that she had been with in the past. And maybe she should have realized that concept earlier, that the Kirika she had been working with before this wasn't the Kirika that had killed her parents. And if she had, she would have been assured of the thought that she really would never have killed her despite her promise, in the same way that she could easily kill her now. All those time spent together...wasted because Mireille had taken Kirika's change for granted.

Loneliness too. She had grown used to having a shadow faithfully with her, a shadow that was actually stronger than her. There was something comforting in knowing that someone would be half the person she was without her. Selfish, yes, but comforting nonetheless...

Maybe she would be better off if she had never met her in the first place.

It was terribly unfair, she thought as she finally rose from her seat. She was the one lugging most, if not all, of the responsibility of the situation, while at the same time she had the most to lose.

A second later, Mireille opened the lavatory door. A heavily-built man with a brown jacket was crossing the small corridor and making his way to the other car where Mireille's seat was. Mireille followed him, leaving him when he found his seat first.

Kirika had moved. She had faced forward, her arm draped over the laptop Mireille had left and her head slightly inclined upwards.

"Well, I'm glad you're not as petrified as I thought," said Mireille dryly as she took her seat. "I thought I'd have to bodily carry you down when we reach Sappo-"

"Don't move. Someone's trailing us."

Mireille felt a chill. "Where?"

"Five o'clock."

"How many of them?"

"One."

"Just one?"

"Disappointed?"

"Hardly. It's a nice change to finally be the one with the advantage."

"Shall I take care of him?" Her voice was mild.

Mireille could not help glancing at her with the edge of her eyes. "Run that by me again, will you? I thought you said before we boarded the train that you're going to be as uninvolved as possible."

"I suppose I am getting bored. Besides, I hate the feeling of someone's eyes boring into the back of my head. Or that he has to follow me to the toilet."

Mireille rolled her eyes. Kirika certainly had gotten what she had bargained for - it was certainly the behavior of any girl her age, pregnant with angst. It was rather strange seeing her this way. But one couldn't blame her much. When one just wakes up and finds out that she can speak French so fluently because the "life" she had remembered to be hers was a lie, one wasn't bound to be very pleasant company.

"I don't think this train car's the most conducive for a battle royale and I doubt the passengers would appreciate one very much right now," Mireille finally pointed out.

"We'll take it outside then." Kirika was making a statement, not asking permission.

There was a pause as Mireille slid the laptop neatly behind her back, feeling very much like a mother who had to give in to the rebel daughter wanting a tattoo. "Fine. Just don't make a mess."

Kirika wordlessly rose up.

"Will you be taking your gun?"

Kirika jerked a thumb towards her seat. She had left it there. When Mireille looked back up, Kirika had gone. So had the man with the brown jacket.

Mireille looked out at the scenery, wishing she could enjoy it. Or at least be so indifferent of it as Kirika was so capable of.

Minutes later, Kirika returned.

"Well?"

"He won't be following you to the toilet anymore."

"Did anyone see?"

"I led him to the end of the train. I opened the back hatch and we had a bit of a scuffle. Then just when the train crossed the intersection, he slipped-"

"I'm sure."

"-and a few seconds later the other train from the other side of the intersection ran over him."

"Was that really necessary?"

"Funny, coming from you." Kirika was looking out the window again. Her eyes were small and narrow.

xxxxxxxxxx

The green light flickered. Then the faint light grew stronger until it finally steadied into a confident luminosity.

Mirelle unclenched her fists in relief, leaning back. The batteries were still working. How long they would last would be another matter, but they were working _now_, which had to count for something.

She waited as the laptop went through the perfunctory beeps and whistles as it booted itself. They had arrived in Wakkanai half an hour earlier and were in a small open-aired teahouse in the outskirts of town. She had a cup of coffee at hand and Kirika was sipping her green tea. At least some things never changed.

"All right, this is the route we're taking," said Mireille as the image of the Sugawara branch shrine appeared onscreen. She pressed a button that immediately replaced the image into a horizontal cross-sectioned blueprint.

Kirika lifted her eyes from studying the leaves in her cup.

As she began to drone about the movements they would be taking, Mireille would frequently glance towards Kirika's direction and look away with a frustration that was not easy to hide. She had no way of reading if Kirika was absorbing any of what she was saying. Or if the girl even cared. During the old days -and permanently in the old days, Mireille thought parenthetically - Kirika would sit and listen with silent attention. She was silent, but there was attention nonetheless. Now Kirika was looking at Mireille though there was no one seated in front of her. Her eyes never even touched on the screen.

"Any questions?" Mireille finished, almost in despair.

"Do you know what the German word 'Schwarz' means?" asked Kirika abruptly.

Mireille took her time as she closed the windows on the screen. "_C'est noir, non_?"

"Noir._Black. Kuro. Nero. Negro. Preto. Hei. Zwart._" And Kirika rattled off a list of the word in all the languages she knew without any visible effort. Then she stopped and looked at Mireille accusingly.

"You'll have to try harder to impress me," said Mireille, the exasperation in her voice audible. "If you have a point, make it now."

Kirika glanced on the laptop. "Why don't we just blow the place up?"

"Why should we?" Mireille grasped her coffee cup and controlled her breathing.

"So you can do it by yourself."

The blonde looked at her sharply.

"Plant bombs around the perimeter. Go for cover. Boom." Kirika's voice held no inflection. " Finished."

"One, the place is huge. An explosion would attract a lot of attention. Two, it's built on a hill. It could cause a landslide."

"But you can still do it by yourself."

Mireile's eyes narrowed. "What has that got to do with anything?"

With a sudden move, Kirika leaned towards her and Mireille involuntarily drew back, wary. "From what I gather," said the Japanese girl in a soft voice, lifting an index finger, "I'm supposed to know you. And you're supposed to know me. We go way back, correct?"

Mireille was silent.

"But we haven't exactly been living the most appealing life in the world, have we? In the life you know, I get to tag along and kill people with you."

"You don't just 'tag along.' We're partners."

"Which makes it worse, you know. We do this a lot, supposedly, you and me; we sit down, make plans, go out at night and come back after making a corpse out of someone. That's the life you know, and that's the one you're forcing on me."

Mireille reddened. "I am not forcing it on you. You came to me-"

"It does not matter. Maybe you enjoy that kind of life, sticking your own neck for the knife every single day, with innumerable enemies just waiting for the smallest slip. Maybe you don't have a choice. But I do, and I want out."

"Now hold on a second-"

"There's no way going around it, miss. Not to make too fine a point on it, but you've made a wanted person out of yourself and apparently I was one too all along. I think it comforted you that you weren't the only one. That there was someone to kill with you and to cover your back."

The blood had fully rushed to Mireille's face now in its indignation. "Listen -"

"From what I gather, if you take the long way around to kill this person, meaning you and I playing partners, there's hope somewhere along the way I might go back to my old self, correct?"

"It's your true self."

"My 'true' self?!" Kirika's voice had risen to an octave that Mireille had never heard before. "That 'true' self where people try to kill me just because I can do this?" In one swift move, Kirika took Mireille's teaspoon and flung it away without even looking. A second later, a pigeon thudded on the ground, inert.

"Stop that."

Kirika's voice sank back. "Tell me, how many people _do_ want my head in a platter?"

When her companion offered no answer, she continued, "If I go along with you, what have I to gain but more enemies, more bloodshed? It's you who want me to go back to the other life, miss. Not me."

"The bloodshed will always be there, Kirika." Mireille's voice was level. "Just because you conveniently forgot it doesn't mean it never existed." She looked at the dead bird and felt the eyes of the people around them on her. "In fact, attempting to forget is already by itself an act of remembrance. You and I, we have no choice. Even you are not fast enough, Kirika, to change your past. No person is."

Kirika stared at her.

"If you leave now, where will you go?" Mireille's eyes never left the pigeon. "What will you do?"

Kirika's eyes were cold stones. "Are you aware of the possibility that I can actually live without you?"

"I'm not saying you can't. In the long run, you will have more chances of survival than I would. Just not now. There are too many people looking for us. We have to stay together."

"I'm leaving after this."

Mireille did not know where to look. "It is your life."

"I'm glad that's clear." Kirika called for the bill.

xxxxxxxxxx

The dipping sun found two slight figures on bicycles making their way up a small hilly inclination. Coming closer, one would see their legs pumping on the pedals rhythmically and their tires making small rocks and clumps of dirt careen off the beaten path. Sunlight filtered through the trees in splatters, making shadows play on their sweat-bathed faces. In front of them rose a sprawling, ancient-looking pavilion, the polished shingles of its sloping roofs catching the orange rays of the sun.

They zigzagged up the road ridged around the hill.

When they had reached the summit, they jumped off their bikes and rolled them towards the wooden gate that loomed in front of the structure. There was not a soul in sight.

The taller one of them strode to the gate and lifted one of the brass circular doorknobs. The crash resounded, disturbing some of the birds behind her.

A minute passed before they heard a creak behind the gate and it slowly opened a few inches. A short elderly Japanese man with balding white hair and a wrinkled mouth peered out curiously, dressed in a spring yukata.

Kirika gave a smile that lighted up her face, bowing. "Good afternoon, sir. My friend and I came from Tokyo to do a little cycling here, but I'm afraid we got lost. I'm sorry, but could you perhaps direct us back to Wakkanai Station? The line would take us to Asahikawa."

The man was nodding in a friendly manner. "Of course, of course, I understand," he said, before following it with a slew of directions and mentioning a few notable scenic spots. "How do you find Hokkaido so far?"

"Thank you very much, it is very beautiful," Kirika said, bowing again. Mireille whispered something into her ear and she nodded. "I am very sorry to inconvenience you again, sir, but my friend needs to find a toilet. Perhaps-?"

He hesitated a little, but said, "Oh, that is not a problem. Please, use ours." He opened the gate a trifle bit wider, smiling.

Mireille bowed profusely before stepping over the threshhold and following Kirika inside.

The old man led them through a maze of corridors walled with the wooden lattices of paper shoji doors. The main courtyard stood in the middle, lined with willow trees and dotted with old boulders that enclosed small waterfalls. Carvings snaked around the rock walls, a body of a dragon appearing here only to disappear and reappear again in the next courtyard with its head and bronze eyes. There was no one around and the place was silent save for their footfalls.

Kirika and Mireille ducked and entered the last circle embrasure before their guide crossed the small courtyard and reached a small niche. There was a tiny sliding door made of wood. Mireille looked at it apprehensively.

"Do not worry, we have indoor plumbing here," the man said in Japanese, laughing toothily. "I will be waiting outside the embrasure. Please take your time."

Mireille slid the door after the man left and looked at clean white bathroom tiles, a squatting toilet with a flushing system, and a small sink. The light bulb was turned on. "Ten seconds," she whispered to Kirika, "then take care of the control center. Do you know where it is from here?"

"North passage, right at the next turn, straight until a left at the next turn."

"I'll be disabling the surveillance cameras from here. I have to say they're quite interesting, putting the breaker box for their surveillances in the restroom. Loyalty is definitely not an issue here. Anyway, you have thirty seconds to get there and I'll have the cameras turned off exactly by that time; they won't know where you'll be coming from. _Comprenez?_"

"You already told me this."

"Wasn't exactly sure you were actually listening to me. I'm touched." Mireille stepped into the restroom.

"Might you possibly find it weird why we haven't seen anyone else aside from the old man?"

"Bet he radioed everyone to stay inside when we came in. Call me crazy, but I don't think tourists are usually welcome here." She slid the door. "Ten seconds, all right? Then thirty."

When ten seconds had passed, Mireille turned off the light and knelt under the sink. She knocked at eight square tiles directly under the main pipeline and they gave a hollow sound. She easily removed them and uncovered the grey distribution box with a keypad of alphanumeric buttons on the front. She punched a sequence and the pad emitted a small beep. She pulled the box open to reveal a plethora of switches and eletrical lines.

She paused, looking at the flush pipe of the toilet that was only a foot away from her. The bug was there, plated in chrome and hardly discernible. It had detected her every movement, from the removing of the tiles to her inputting the access codes.

"Thanks, Kinomoto."

She looked at her watch and reached for the biggest switch in the box, flicking it off.

When she emerged from the restroom, Mireille had already pulled out her gun from the back of her shorts, expecting the swarming gunmen.

The halls were empty. Kirika was standing in front of her, gun drawn.

**surgite, end**


	9. Ardente

**Liberi Fatali**  
  
Chapter Nine:  
Ardente 

"Oh no." Mireille stared at her, her palms prickly with apprehension. The situation felt frighteningly familiar. "_No_."

Kirika was unfazed as she made her gun spin around her hand. "Computers and monitors were all turned off. There was no one there. There's no one anywhere; I can't even find the old man. Just thought you'd like to know."

"You did all that in thirty seconds?" asked Mireille faintly, feeling the prickles spreading up her extremities. "Are you sure?"

"Take it or leave it."

"The old man must have radioed everyone to evacuate this place the moment he saw us. Schwarz has profiles of us distributed among his men, I'm sure."

"What would be the point of that? They're supposed to capture us, remember? Besides, an evac of a few hundred men in minutes without one of us seeing a thing? You know that's impossible, even for professionals." Kirika's eyes followed the muzzle of her twirling gun. "I checked the control center; no one had been there in days. This was too convenient - they knew we were coming. This was bait."

Mireille's voice had grown louder. "But I distinctly saw people in the laptop feed just hours ago before we left the inn. This place was full of them!"

"Then someone was lying."

"We have to get out of here."

"All the doors are locked, even the windows. I checked. Had a hunch."

"They may be watching us from the outside." Mireille could hear her heart thundering as if it would explode. "They have us where they want us to be." 

"The best way out is from the roofs." Kirika finally caught her gun into an upright position and made a move to leave. "They won't expect us to come out there. Come on, we don't have much time."

Mireille attempted to follow her, but she only felt herself lean against the small door limply, her gun almost slipping off from her hand. She felt as if she was about to be torn apart by the questions and the guesses.

"Come on," repeated Kirika urgently.

Mireille had closed her eyes, whispering, "I'm tired of this."

"_What_?" Kirika's eyebrows shot up. Her voice was controlled but she was clearly exasperated. "What are you talking about? You're the one who got us into this!"

"You think Kinomoto lied to us too?"

"We'll have much better chances of finding out if we stay alive." Kirika had grabbed her wrist, dragging her towards the stairs. "Let's move!"

"Lies. It's all a pack of lies. What's the point?" Mireille voice was close to trembling as Kirika began to push her up the staircase. She was helpless, with no control whatsoever. Many times in many hits, the truth had been hidden from her, but not twisted and distorted in so many ways and so many times. Her eyes rove across the wet, pebbly courtyard and the small stone bridge that arched over a gurgling pond. Kirika had brought her up the second and top floor, and from her vantage point she could see the dragon's head. There they were supposed to press the two bronze eyes simultaneously and a trapdoor would open, leading them to an underground bomb shelter that had been built during the Second World War in preparation for the air raids. Mireille had never actually seen Schwarz in person in the bugs' feed, but she had seen many comings and goings there from the laptop's older records and she gathered enough that if there was ever a hideout, it would be there.

"We'll have to scale up the woodwork," Kirika was saying. The girl had already taken off her jacket and had slung it around one of the vertical wooden supports. She hoisted herself up the railings. "Come on!" 

"What do they want from us?" Mireille dug her fingernails into her palms to feel the pain and keep herself from going out of her mind. "Do you hear me?" she found herself shouting at a dead surveillance camera. "What do you want from me?!"

"Hey!" Kirika was halfway up the post, rappelling herself upwards with the jacket. "Let's get going!"

"What for?" Mireille laughed bitterly as she took off her own jacket in jerky movements. "Maybe they'll just have the roof collapse before we even get there!"

Kirika reached the intersection where the roof and the crisscrossing posts met and she pulled herself up the shingles and onto the roof. "One more quip like that and you're on your own."

"All the same to me. I've been on my own for these past few days."

There was a silence. Kirika was crouched at the edge of the roof, gazing at the blonde who was struggling to haul herself up the rickety support against a backdrop of paper doors. Then she reached out an arm, her palm open. "Grab my hand."

Mireille did, scrabbling some of the shingles which fell down to the floor and smashed into debris. On the other side was a panorama of rolling green hills under a twilight sky. It was a long drop down and the full moon was bright.

She stared at the thick grass below, tinted blue in the night. Something glinted behind the trees. Binoculars, no doubt. If Kinomoto had lied to her, then what was the whole point of the escape from DreamHub and the siege at Kinomoto's place? Or his death? Or had that been feigned too? Where did the lie end and the truth begin? _What were they doing here?_

"Do you hear that?...Hey." Mireille felt Kirika nudge her by the ribs, waking her from her stupor. "Helicopter."

Kirika was pointing at the horizon. Mireille could barely make out the sight of a black Chinook emerging from the stars, sixteen meters long, its two three-bladed rotors propelling the helicopter speedily towards the pavilion.

"I can't do this anymore."

"Get a grip and your gun out, Mireille." Kirika had already lifted hers. "The ground troops must have called it when they realized we're not going out the conventional way."

Mireille took a deep breath and let her eyeballs roll backwards, feeling the earth-scented breeze clear her mind. She clenched and unclenched her shaking hands, trying to steady herself. Kirika was right, as usual. They had already passed by the point of no return long ago and to give in now would be nothing short of suicide. She had to focus, even for its own sake, just to keep her alive.

_I am not going to die in a trap that I had so blindly walked into..._

Something cold touched her and her eyes met the butt of Kirika's pistol upon her arm. The Japanese girl's own eyes were away as she said a little awkwardly, "It'll be all right."

Mireille thought she heard something familiar in Kirika's voice but she pushed the thought out of her mind. "Thanks." She felt nonetheless warmer. "What do you see?"

"It's fitted with M-134 six-barrelled guns and an M-60 machine gun, not to mention enough space inside for two Land Rovers. Schwarz' troops armed long-range, I'm guessing."

"What do you suggest?"

"We're no match for the helicopter's firepower; it's going to decimate the place. We'll have to get inside it. Or I could just aim for the rotors when it comes close enough and make quick work of it."

Mireille stood at the roof, feeling the pulse in her jugular vein racing and the sharp breeze making her cheeks numb. The stars winked above her and she tensed. "If we're ever going to get rid of them, we'll have to ride it to wherever Schwarz is."

"Hijack?"

"Sounds good to me."

The incoming Chinook was making the high grass flail wildly in the wind, the sound of its propellers deafening. It looked like a giant black bumblebee of doom from where Mireille and Kirika were standing and it was coming closer, unwavering.

"And for a change, let's do something they won't expect us to do." There was a strange light in Mireille's eyes. "Passive resistance."

"And that works in this case - how?"

"Rather simply. First we are passive, then when the time is right, we become resistant."

"When is the right time?"

"When we get some answers. Or when we're at the brink of certain death. Whichever comes first."

Kirika pocketed back her pistol. The helicopter had arrived, loud as thunder, large as life, the side hatch open and swarthy gunmen packed inside gazing at them, shiny muzzles trained. As the Chinook hovered precariously over the roof, a rope ladder was let down followed by one of the gunmen, his rifle strapped across his back.

"Mireille Bouquet and Kirika Yuumura?" He spoke in English and was swathed in navy-blue from top to toe. Even his voice was muffled with the covering of his mouth and the only thing visible about him was his bright blue eyes.

None of the girls answered. Two more men slid down the ladder as the first one began frisking Mireille. Kirika threw her the beginnings of a frown but Mireille replied in an almost imperceptible shake of the head. The first operative had already pulled out her Walther, motioning the others to do the same to Kirika. Before long, their guns were confiscated and their wrists were slapped with handcuffs behind their backs. They were tossed over the shoulders of the men and hauled into the helicopter as it began to move away.

Mireille saw no expression in Kirika's eyes as they were thrown into one of the benches that ran on the two sides of the Chinook. She could hear someone radioing their status at the controls. They were squeezed in between more ranks of padded gunmen who stood or sat, numbering to forty, and the one with the blue eyes stood in front of the girls with a roll of duct tape in his gloved palms.

Mireille eyed it. "At least tell us where we're going."

"Please purse your lips together so it won't hurt when we take it off." He took the edge of the tape and ripped a strip off.

"Are we going to Schwarz?"

The man regarded her in silence as he knelt down and taped her lips together and proceeded to do the same to the motionless Kirika. When he had finished, he stood up and said, "No."

Mireille felt the blood rush up her face as Kirika grew taut beside her. Then as the man began to take his seat opposite them, Mireille, in the gentlest and the most indiscernible manner possible, pressed her elbow against Kirika's ribs.

It was like a spring being released after eons of being coiled. Kirika immediately leaped up and smoothly slid her body and her legs over her manacled hands in midair like an acrobatic escape artist. By the time her feet touched the metal floor, she had tugged an automatic from the blue-eyed man's belt and was holding it against his forehead. In an instant, everyone else had stood up and had directed their guns at her, the clicks echoing across the body of the helicopter.

In the confusion, Mireille had bent down and slid her arms down her ankles and lifted her feet backwards consecutively. She ripped the tape off her mouth with her knuckles.

"Gentlemen!" and Mireille felt some of them turn and poke their muzzles against her back, reminding her to be diplomatic. "Gentlemen. We are not attempting escape. We only want one thing - to turn this helicopter around so we could see Mr. Schwarz face to face."

The one nearest to her barked in heavily-accented English, "We had distinct orders to transport you to the laboratory directly. You will not see him there. We were also ordered to neutralize you if you fail to comply."

Mireille processed this information before continuing, "And my friend can put a hole into the back of your commanding officer's head, something I also don't wish to see. I assure you, gentlemen, merely change course and we will be at your disposal. That is all. We are still your prisoners."

Kirika had also ripped off the tape plastered on her mouth and the one beside her narrowed his eyes at Mireille. "We came prepared to die."

_Spoken like a true Soldat minion_, Mireille thought but she refrained. "That is needless," she said aloud, glancing over the clusters of men around her. "You shoot and my friend will shoot and in this cramped space we will only end up shooting ourselves. A stray bullet will find the pilot and we shall all crash and become tomorrow's headline. All we ask is a change in course and an escort to your boss under your complete supervision. _C'est tout_. No one needs to die." Her voice lowered. "Do not be so quick as to forget who you are dealing with, gentlemen."

Eyes shifted. The lieutenant looked at his officer, who nodded once. Guns and jacketed arms went down swiftly, except for Kirika's. Her handcuffs clinked against each other as she moved her left palm to rest below the butt of the gun. She stood like a statue, the mouth of the automatic steady.

Her hostage lifted his eyes to look at Mireille. "She cannot hold out like that for so long until we arrive at the lighthouse."

Mireille had nestled comfortably back to her seat as she felt the helicopter make a ninety-degree turn. "Try her."

xxxxx

The lighthouse was striped red and white and towered fifteen meters, built upon a breakwater that jutted out from one of Hokkaido's isolated shores. The sea was as dark as the gunmen's uniform. Mireille bit back a yawn and looked at her watch anxiously. Nine in the night. She hadn't eaten anything since lunch and she was already feeling an incredible urge to curl up and go to sleep. Her joints felt sore and the fatigue was overwhelming.

She looked enviously at Kirika, who had not moved a muscle.

The helicopter slowly descended onto a helipad on the shoal located some meters away from the lighthouse. The men filtered out of the side hatches first, their boots clanking in unison, until only their captain and the two girls were left aboard. They broke into files, making two human walls that led to the entrance of the lighthouse, rifles raised, safety catches flicked off.

"Red carpet treatment." Mireille stood up and gazed at the height of the lighthouse until her eyes stopped at the top where the beacon should be, surrounded by glass panes and a platform. "Let me commend you on an impressive squad, _Monsieur Capitaine_."

The captain stood up as well, with Kirika's wary eyes upon him, and silently moved towards the hatch, jumping down. A gravel path led the way to the lighthouse.

Two plainclothes sentinels opened the steel door for them and two of the captain's men followed the three inside. The swirling stairs were caked with rust and the corrosion scratched against Mireille's boots. She looked at the cylindrical cement wall that surrounded them and ominously bounced five pairs of footsteps upon metal back and forth.

The captain reached the trapdoor at the top and pushed it open, his head disappearing into the top floor. Kirika followed him and Mireille was the last to pull herself up.

The room was sparse. The floor was wooden and there was a bedstead with a thin mattress on and some sheets and a pillow. A desk in the middle was piled with papers and a computer terminal and behind it sat Wilhelm Schwarz, flanked by four unarmed guards in blue jumpsuits.

Mireille felt a stream of words rushing across her head and fighting to come out of her mouth but she controlled herself. He didn't look any different. He was still wearing that white laboratory coat she had last seen him in and his beard was still as grizzled.

He was the first to speak, lifting his eyes from the computer engagingly. "Ms. Yuumura, I think you can let poor Pietro go now."

Kirika finally dropped her arm and the captain's shoulders relaxed.

Schwarz had propped up his right arm on the desk, placing his chin on his knuckles. He had an interested look on his face. "Pietro, please be so good as to liberate these two beautiful ladies, if you will. They are my guests now."

Mireille felt anger rising like a red flood up her neck as Pietro unlocked their handcuffs and disappeared into the trapdoor with them. His gun was still gripped in Kirika's hand and Kirika's muscles were contracted as tight as the ropes in a boxing ring, ready to let fly at any signal.

"I hope that it is clear that you are allowed this little detour only by virtue of my own curiosity." Schwarz's refined, European voice was still pleasant but Mireille noted how a little excitement had already crept into it. "And I am...very, very curious, to say the very least." He lifted a coffee mug to his lips, his eyes glittering. "This was not expected indeed, giving in to my men without even an attempt to fight. And to think that things had been going so well. Most troubling, most troubling. If I had known otherwise, I would say that the indomitable Noir spirit has finally been broken, after so many centuries of tradition."

Mireille reviewed her words in her head before saying them with the most frost that she could muster in her voice. "Akira Kinomoto. The pavilion. Explain."

The man's eyes crinkled and he let out a guffaw, almost spilling some of his coffee. "Is that all, Ms. Bouquet? I was half-expecting some pronouncement of doom and then a dazzling dance of death or some other. Really, you are not acting yourself today at all."

Kirika looked at Mireille. Mireille was silent.

"Very well, if you must know. It is the least I can do to clear the name of poor, naive Akira Kinomoto - bless his soul, wherever it is now." Schwarz lifted his hands patronizingly, a smile lacing his lips. "I suspect he's been chatting with you. And he did not mislead you, Mademoiselle Bouquet, nor did he set you up for a trap. However, the three of you, as well as Remi Graipaul, were terribly, terribly overconfident. There was a small oversight on your part, and it proved fatal. Small oversights often do." He folded his arms and leaned forward. "Somehow, no one had thought of the possibility that I may have in my possession a wiretap system."

Mireille felt her heart stop.

"We like being certain of all the communication that goes through all our locations, you see, and once again this precaution has worked another wonder for me." He lifted an index finger with the air of a schoolteacher. "Let me give Remi credit: his spies were very good. We were not aware that bugs had been installed in our territories. That is, until my wiretap people began picking up unauthorized transmissions being broadcasted from inside. We intercepted the signals, processed them, and saw that they were audio-visual feeds of, of all things, us." He shrugged. "This was six months ago. At first I was tempted to fully disable all the bugs that had been installed, but then something whispered to me, why not use it to my advantage? This can be of use, Wilhelm, I said to myself. And so we traced the bugs, and in one brief moment of beautiful Soldat sychronization and timing, replaced their transmissions with two-year old video feeds from our own numerous surveillance cameras with the most similar angle as possible. There was a slight break in transmission as you would see in your files, I'm sure, but it was less than a second, and you could have easily attributed it to a superficial technical difficulty, which happens often. I ordered my men to evacuate and I made this lighthouse my refuge in case DreamHub was breached."

Mireille's hands were shaking.

"So you see, Mademoiselle Bouquet, Kinomoto is quite innocent. Too innocent even, I think, and too readable, as you are," Schwarz was saying sympathetically. "After you bolted from DreamHub, I knew you would take the most logical recourse - my pavilion in Wakkanai. All we had to do was wait for you."

He lifted his hand and the guards in the blue jumpsuits behind him stepped forward.

"These men will escort you to the helicopter that will take you to the laboratory; I'm sure you want this unpleasant business to be over with as much as I do."

Mireille still had not said a word but her eyes were smoldering with blue fire. When the guards got a hold of her arms, she tightened and would not comply.

"And so it has come to this." Schwarz leaned back serenely. "I suppose it would only be fair to tell you that these six are the 'beta' products of my little innovation, as one would say. They are just as Noir as you are, Mademoiselle Bouquet; it has been done. Their physical bulk may prevent them from being as agile as you, but their strength is beyond your capabilities. I would suggest some discretion on your part."

"_Male_ Noir?" Mireille finally spoke and her voice was disdainful. "Is nothing sacred anymore, Schwarz?"

"Nothing has been sacred for a very long time, Mademoiselle; I don't see you working for the purpose that Noir was originally created to fulfill either, do I?" He shrugged again. "This is the Modern era, where people live by the gospel of gold, having done with God. You, of all people, should know that - you who peddle yourself to the highest bidder, you who kill for money." He finished his coffee with relish. "A piece of advice, Mademoiselle - don't be so preposterously self-righteous. It doesn't suit you very well."

Mireille's elbows rammed into her captors' solar plexuses like sledgehammers. As their grips relaxed in pain, Kirika had already twisted her own captors' wrists and had slipped away from their grasp, her eyes silently screaming danger at Mireille. Mireille was halfway leaping onto Schwarz desk. Then she felt a sharp pain on her leg and the ground below rushed towards her, the side of her head making contact. Neurons exploded. White everywhere.

When the fog cleared, Mireille lifted her throbbing head, the world spinning before her. One of the Noir guards had grabbed her from behind and had brought her down with amazing speed. She could taste blood where she had accidentally bitten her cheek.

"Mireille!"

Only one gun between them. No extra bullet clips. They would have to be prudent.

Mireille rolled sideways, kicking the guard's face with her shoes. He fell back and she painfully struggled to get up on her feet, her arms aching. Schwarz was midway in the act of disappearing quickly into the trapdoor. Kirika was crouched in front of the windows, eyes narrow, lips pursed, gun directed at the retreating scientist, who was being covered by the three other guards closing in on Kirika.

Mireille swore, berating herself for distracting Kirika when the girl already had a clear shot of Schwarz earlier, and dove for the trapdoor as it shut on her face. Before she could pick herself up, a hand with the grip of an excavator seized her neck and hoisted her up, making her legs dangle in the air. Mireille felt her breath rush out from her lungs and bright spots appeared before her eyes as she came face to face with the guard she had kicked. Blood was pouring out of his nose but he did not seem to be aware of it.

Three gunshots rang out but she heard only one bury into flesh. Gasping from her constricted throat, Mireille clawed on her captor's hands and swung her legs hard. Her shin connected with his crotch. She saw the look of agony cross his face, a look she had seen many times, but before he crumpled to the ground, he swung his arm and released her.

Mireille was airborne, hurtling across the room. Before her body crashed into the windows, before the night wind greeted her as she fell from the tower fifteen meters away from the water below, she saw Kirika surrounded by two guards and a body, staring at her, her eyes wide and the gun limp in her hands.

"_Mireille!_"

The glass shattered.

**ardente, end**


End file.
